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BOOK     170.SM9   c   1 

SMYTH    #    CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 


3    T1S3    OOObSbb?    3 


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This   book   may  be   kept   out 

TWO     WEEKS 

only  and  is  subject  to  a  fine  of  TWO  CENTS 
a  day  thereafter.  It  will  be  due  on  the  day 
indicated  below. 


'.5  \m 
1926 

1932 


Zhe  international  ^beological  Xlbrar^. 


EDITED    BY 

CHARLES   A.    BRIGGS,  D.D., 

£dward  Robinson  Professor  of  Biblical  Theology,  Union   Theological 
Se  m  in  a  ry ,  Netv   York  ; 

AND 

STEWART   D.   F.    SALMOND,   D.D., 

Professor  of  Systematic   Theology  and  New   Testament  Exegesis, 
Free  Church   College,  Aberdeen. 


CHRISTIAN     ETHICS. 
By   NEWMAN    SxMYTH. 


International   Theological   Library 


CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 


BY 

NEWMAN  SMYTH 


KEW  YORK 
CHAELES    SCRIBNEE'S    SONS 

1896 


COPVRIOHT,   1S92,   BY 

CHARLES  SCKIBNER'S  SONS 


5'S'h'^ 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION 

PAGE 

The  nature  of  Christian  Ethics 1 

I.  Christian  Ethics  and  Metaphysics 3 

II.  Christian  Ethics  and  Philosophical  Ethics 4 

III.  Christian  Ethics  and  Psychology 7 

IV.  Christian  Ethics  and  Theology 8 

V.  The  Relation  of  Ethics  and  Religion 13 

1.   Their  historical   dependence.  —  2.  Their  independence. — 

3.   They  are  complementary  elements.  —  4.   Their  transcen- 
dental postulate.  —  5.  Ethics  fulfilled  in  religion ...    15-26 

YI.    Christian  Ethics  and  Economics 26 

VII.  Philosophical  Postulates  of  Christian  Ethics  .    26 

I.  Human  nature  constituted  for  moral  life 27 

II.  The  authority  of  conscience.  —  1.  The  moral  constant  and 
variables.  —  2.  The  history  of  conscience  determined  by 
conscience.  —  3.  The  moral  constant  an  object  of  choice.  — 
4.  Means  of  moral  comparison.  —  5.  The  idea  of  worth. — 

6.  Failure  to  explain  away  the  moral  factor 28-43 

VIII.  Theological  Postulates  of  Christian  Ethics 43 

IX.  Special  Requirements  for  this  Study 45 


PAET   FIRST.     THE   CHEISTIAN  IDEAL 

CHAPTER   I 

The  Revelation  or  the  Christian  Ideal 

The  ideality  of  ethics 49 

I.  The  Ideal  as  given  in  the  historic  Christ 52 

II.  Historical  Mediation  of  the  Christian  Ideal 58 

§  1.    Through  the  Scriptures 60 

§  2.    Through  the  Christian  Consciousness 64 

1.    The  principle  of  spiritual  continuity. — 2.    Of  progres- 

[  sive  appropriation 64-71 

§  3.    The  Relation  of  Scripture  and  Faith 71 

V 


VI  CONTENTS 

PAGB 

1.  Divers  ways  of  the  Spirit.  — 2.  The  Scriptures  and  Chris- 
tian Consciousness  not  independent.  —  3.  The  one  teaching  of 
the  Spirit. — 4.    Mutual  relations  of  the  Scriptures  and  faith. 

—  6.    The  original  Protestant  conception 72-76 

-    III.   Significance  for  Christian  Ethics  of  this  View 76 

1.  False  and  true  conservatism.  —  2.  The  value  given  to 
hope 76-82 

CHAPTER   II 
The  Contents  of  the  Christian  Ideal 

The  good  supremely  to  be  desired 83 

I.  The  Biblical  Doctrine  of  the  Highest  Good 88 

§  1.   The  Old  Testament  Conception 88 

§  2.   The  New  Testament  Conception 93 

I.  The  moral  ideal  in  the  kingdom  of  God.  —  1.  A  present 
kingdom.  —  2.  The  moral  realism  of  Jesus'  teaching. — 
3.  Its  positivism.  —  4.  Particular  elements  of  this  concep- 
tion  96-108 

II.  In  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount 108 

III.  In  the  doctrine  of  eternal  life.  —  1.  Life  a  good.  —  2.  To 
be  delivered  from  evil.  —  3.  Spiritual  renewal. — 4.  Com- 
pleteness of  personal  relationships.  —  5.  Moral  qualities 
involved.  —  6.  A  present  reality.  — 7.  Blessedness  its  ele- 
ment   111-120 

IV.  Jesus  himself  the  Ideal 120 

II.  The  Ideal  in  the  Christian  Consciousness 123 

I.  An  absolute  ideal.  —  1.  Its  holiness.  —  2.  Its  righteousness.  123-126 

II.  An  ideal  co-extensive  with  life 126 

III.  An  ideal  comprehensive  of  good 127 

III.  Comparison  of  the  Christian  Ideal  with  others 129 

1.  Classic  ideals.  —  2.  Oriental  ideals. — 3.  Partly  Christian 
ideals.  —  (1)  Esthetic,  (2)  Evolutionary,  (3)  Socialistic 129-143 

CHAPTER  III 
The  Realization  of  the  Moral  Ideal 

The  history  of  the  ideal / . . ., 144 

I.  The  Prehistoric  Stage  of  Moral  Development 146 

1.  Initial  moral  capacity. — 2.  The  corresponding  principle  of 
moral  appropriation 147-155 

II.  The  Legal  Epoch  of  Moral  Development 155 

1.   The  moral  commandment.  —  2.  The  subjective  principle  of 


CONTENTS  Vii 

PAGE 

moral  appropriation  in  (1)  the  tribal,  (2)  the  national,  (3)  the 
prophetic  period,  and  (4)  in  the  later  individualized  conscience. 
—  3.  Results  reached  on  the  legal  plane,  (1)  the  idea  of  right, 
(2)  of  rights,  (3)  of  sin  as  guilt,  (4)  a  moral  conception  of 
God,  (5)  the  sense  of  retribution,  (6)  of  expiation.  —4.  Incom- 
pleteness of  the  legal  epoch 155-182 

III.    The  Christian  Era  of  Moral  Development 182 

1.  The  Word  before  Christ.  —2.  Christ  in  humanity.  —  3.  The 
eternal  humanness  of  God. — 4.  Ethical  significance  of  the  In- 
carnation. —  5.  The  receptive  principle  in  the  Christian  era.  —  ' 
6.  Its  relation  to  other  principles  :  —  §  1.  Authority  of  faith.  — 
§  2.  Psychological  validity  of  faith.  —  §  3.  Distinctive  Christian 
use  of  the  principle  of  faith 183-215 


CHAPTER    IV 

EORMS    IN   WHICH    THE    CHRISTIAN    IdEAL    IS    TO    BE    REALIZED 

Individual  virtue  and  social  good 216 

I.  Classification  of  Virtues  by  analysis  of  the  Christian  Conscious- 

ness    222 

1.   Love  as  self-affirmation. — 2.  As  self-impartation.  —  3.  As 
self-finding  in  another 226-232 

II.  Genetic  Determination  of  Virtue 232 

1.  The  genesis  of  Christian  virtue. — 2.  The  process  of  its  for- 
mation. —  3.  The  growth  of  the  new  life 232-240 

CHAPTER   V 
Methods  of  the  Progressive  Realization  of  the  Christian  Ideal 

Moral  development  in  a  world  of  evil  241 

I.  The  Method  of  Conflict 242 

1.  Not  wholly  a  consequence  of  sin.  — 2.  A  method  to  be  spirit- 
ualized   245-247 

II.  The  Method  of  Co-operation 247 

III.  The  Method  of  Spiritual  Possession  and  Use 249 

CHAPTER   VI 
The  Spheres  in  which  the  Christian  Ideal  is  to  be  Realized 

I.  It  proceeds  from  Personal  Centres 254 

II.  It  is  to  be  realized  in  the  Christian  Society 258 


VIU  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

§  1.   The  Family 259 

1.   The  family  an  historic  growth.  —  2.  A  means  for  further 

good   260-263 

§  2.   The  State 263 

§  3.   The  Church 274 

1.  Its  formative  ethical  idea.  —  2.  Its  relation  to  other  asso- 
ciations. —  3.  Church  and  State 274-291 

§  4.   The  Indeterminate  Social  Spheres 291 


PAET    SECOND.      CHRISTIAN    DUTIES 

CHAPTER   I 
The  Christian  Conscience 

I.  The  Specific  Character  of  the  Christian  Conscience 293 

1.  As  determined  by  faith.  —2.  By  love.  —3.  By  hope. .  ..293-297 

II.  The  Christian  Education  of  Conscience 297 

1.  In  the  home.  — 2.  In  society.  — 3.  In  the  Church.  — 4.  The 
individuality  of  conscience 297-303 

III.  Means  for  the  Christian  Education  of  Conscience 303 

1.  The  public  school.  — 2.  The  pulpit.  — 3.  The  Christian  col- 
lege. —  4.  The  newspaper.  — 5.  Personal  example 303-311 

IV.  Questions  concerning  Conscience 311 

1.  The  personal  instance. — 2.    Works  of  supererogation. — 

3.  Collision  of  moral  claims 311-319 

V.  Classification  of  Duties 320 

1.  From  the  action  of  the  will.  — 2.  From  the  relation  of  the 
will  to  objects.  —  3.  From  the  objects  of  its  action.  —  4.  From 
objects  regarded  as  moral  ends 320-326 

CHAPTER  II 
Duties  towards  Self  as  a  Moral  End 

Some  self-love  required  by  the  commandment  of  love 327 

I.  The  Duty  of  Self-preservation 331 

(1)    Maintenance   of  all  functions  of   life,   (2)  self-defence, 

(3)  temperance,  (4)  wholesome  habits,  (5)  the  Christian 
thought  of  death,  (6)  no  right  of  suicide,  (7)  healthful  condi- 
tions of  life,  <'S)  inward  integrity,  (9)  discrimination  in  sensi- 
ble enjoyments,  (10)  a  true  individuality,  (11)  self-control, 
(12)  conflict  against  sin 332-356 

II.  The  Duty  of  Self -development 356 

III.  The  Duty  of  Realizing  the  Good  in  One's  Self 364 


CONTENTS  IX 


CHAPTER   III 

Duties  towards  Others  as  Moral  Ends 

PAGE 

The  Christian  law  of  love 371 

I  General  Duties  which  proceed  from  Love ; 375 

1.  Justice , 375 

(1)  Personal  justness,  (2)  making  things  right,  (3)  giving 
men  their  dues,  (4)  use  of  the  means  of  justice 377-386 

2.  Truthfulness 386 

(1)  To  self,  (2)  to  society,  (3)  a  limited  obligation,  (4)  a  posi- 
tive law 386-403 

3.  Honorableness 403 

II.    Duties  in  the  Special  Spheres  of  Social  Life 405 

§  1.    In  the  Family,  —  Marriage,  —  Divorce 405-415 

§2.  In  the  State. — 1.  Interest  in  public  affairs, — 2,  Obedi- 
ence to  law.  —  3.  Participation  in  politics.  —  4.  Special  polit- 
ical obligations 415-421 

§  3,  In  the  Church.  —  1.  Personal  right  in  the  Church,  — 
2.  Duties  in  the  Church.  —  3.  The  missionary  obliga- 
tion   421-432 

§  4.  In  the  Indeterminate  Social  Spheres.  — 1.  The  Christian 
conscience  in  friendship,  —  2.  The  Christian  industrial  con- 
science,—  3,  Professional  ethics  (1)  of  the  scholar,  (2)  of 
the  different  callings 432-440 


CHAPTER   IV 
The  Social  Problem  and  Christian  Duties 

The  urgency  of  social  problems 441 

I.  The  existing  Social  Problem 442 

1.  In  what  it  does  not  consist. — (1)  Not  simply  social  dis- 
content, (2)  nor  existence  of  poverty,  (3)  nor  question  of 
method 442-444 

2.  Positive  determination  of  its  nature.  —  (1)  Anonymousness 
of  modern  life,  (2)  separation  between  capital  and  labor, 

(3)  the  human  waste,  (4)  monopolies 444-447 

3.  Definition  of  the  social  problem 447 

II,  The  Integration  of  Socialism 448 

1,  A  fair  share  of  the  products.  — 2.  Private  ownership  of  the 
means  of  production.  —  3.  Radical  sociological  defect  of  col- 
lectivism    448-456 

IIL    The  Root  of  the  Social  Problem  in  Moral  Evil 456 

rV.    Social  Duties  under  the  Existing  System 459 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

1.  To  recognize  existing  moral  elements.  —  2.  To  use  ethical 
powers  of  the  present  order.  —  3.  To  develop  ethically  the 
present  system.  —  4.  To  resist  tendencies  to  industrial  disinte- 
gration   459-464 

V.    Duties  of  the  Churches  concerning  the  Social  Question 464 

1.  Not  to  be  indifferent  spectators. — 2.  To  study  sociological 
laws.  — 3.  To  be  all  things  to  all  men 464-467 


CHAPTER   V 
Duties  Towards  God 

Specific  duties  towards  God  enjoined  in  the  Scriptures 468 

I.  Duties  towards  the  unknown  God , 470 

II.  Duties  towards  the  revealed  God 474 

1.  Theology  should  impute  to  God  nothing  contrary  to  moral 
ideas. —  2.  Further  positive  duties,  (1)  reconciliation  with  God, 
(2)  prayer,  and  communion  with  God,  (3)  all  conduct  to  be 
■referred  to  God,  (4)  special  religious  acts  and  observances. 475-478 


CHAPTER    VI 
The  Christian  Moral  Motive  Power 

Ethics  finally  a  question  of  motive  power 479 

I.  The  Christian  Motive  Power  in  History 483 

1.  The  moral  motives  in  the  Old  Testament.  — 2.  In  the  Gos- 
pel. —  3.  In  the  continuous  life  of  the  Church 483-489 

II.  Analysis  of  the  Christian  Motive  Power 489 

1.  The  force  of  morally  powerful  truths. — 2.  The  personal 
influence  of  Jesus.  —  3.  The  working  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ.  — 
Conclusion. 489-494 


CHRISTIAI^    ETHICS 


INTRODUCTION 

"  Let  us  learn  to  live  according  to  Christianity,"  said 
Ignatius^  in  the  second  century.  No  simpler  or  better  defi- 
nition of  Christian  ethics  could  be  given.  It  is  the  science 
of  living  according  to  Christianity.  Its  subject-matter  is 
broad  as  human  life  ;  its  object  is  to  bring  all  the  materials 
of  life  under  this  supreme,  formative  principle,  "  According 
to  Christ."  Hence  Christian  ethics  is  not  to  be  regarded 
as  an  individual  discipline  in  virtue  merely,  but  it  consti- 
tutes also  a  social  science.  It  was  a  prayer  of  social  Chris- 
tianity that  an  apostle  offered  for  the  Romans :  "  Now  the 
God  of  patience  and  of  comfort  grant  you  to  be  of  the 
same  mind  one  with  another  according  to  Christ  Jesus."  ^ 
Christian  ethics  is  the  science  of  living  well  with  one  an- 
other according  to  Christ.  A  believer  in  those  early  days, 
speaking  to  a  pagan,  said  of  the  communities  of  Christians, 
"We  do  not  speak  great  things,  we  live  them."^  Christian 
ethics — this  science  of  living  great  things — does  not  follow 
an  abstract  theory  of  virtue,  but  proceeds  from  a  creative 
Person.  It  gathers  the  fruit  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ.  Con- 
sequently it  will  not  be  merely  an  intellectual  exposition  of 
the  ethical  maxims  of  Jesus  and  his  disciples ;  it  will  seek 
for  the  interpretation  and  reconciliation  of  human  life  and 
its  problems  in  the  wisdom  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ. 

Christian  ethics  has  been  said  by  Rothe  to  be,  "  in  the 
proper  sense  of  the  word — a  history ;  statistics  and  politics 

1  Epist.  ad  Magn.  c.  x.  2  Rom.  xv.  5.         3  Minucius  Felix,  Octavius,  c.  38, 

1 


2  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

of  the  kingdom  of  God."  ^  This  ethics  springs  from  an 
historical  revelation,  and  is  to  be  realized  through  a  Chris- 
tian history.  It  presupposes  a  Christian  development  of 
the  world,  —  an  evolution  under  Christian  laws  of  life  and 
for  a  Christian  consummation.  Its  discussions  must  follow, 
therefore,  an  historical  method.  Christianity,  according  to 
which  we  are  to  learn  to  live,  is  an  historical  development, 
and  the  ethics  of  it  are  likewise  the  fruit  of  processes  of 
Christian  growth.  Hence  Christian  ethics  has  been  a 
progressive,  and  is  still  an  unfinished,  science.  We  are 
not  yet  made  perfect  either  in  our  Christian  life,  or  in  our 
knowledge  or  science  of  the  life. 

Moral  philosophy  has  often  been  rendered  too  formal 
and  fruitless  because  it  has  lacked  the  historical  spirit,  —  a 
defect  which  characterized  generally  the  ethics  of  the  last 
century,  and  particularly  the  ethics  of  Kant.  In  his  criti- 
cal hands  moral  science  was  emptied  of  actuality.  Mod- 
ern scientific  ethics  has  done  excellent  service  in  recalling 
moral  philosophy  from  this  lifeless  realm  of  abstractions, 
and  restoring  to  it  vitality,  color,  and  warmth  as  a  moral 
history  of  real  life.  Christian  ethics  agrees  with  the  scien- 
tific in  starting  from  what  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  insists  is  the 
proper  ground  of  "  facts  of  observation  " ;  ^  it  differs  from 
scientific  ethics  by  searching  for  its  premises  and  finding 
its  laws  in  the  observed  facts  of  the  Christian  moral  con- 
sciousness and  its  historical  development.^ 

The  object  of  Christian  ethics,  accordingly,  is  not  to 
discover  a  philosophy  of  virtue,  but  to  bring  to  adequate 
interpretation  the  Christian  consciousness  of  life.  We  are 
to  seek  in  this  inquiry  to  understand  in  its  principles,  its 
relations,  and  its  activities,  the  Christian  moral  conscious- 
ness of  life.  While  Christian  ethics  is  thus  in  its  source 
and  method  an  historical  science,  it  cannot,  however,  be 

1  Theologische  Ethik,  vol.  iv.  s.  14.  2  Science  of  Ethics,  p.  36. 

3  Schleiermacher  defined  Christian  ethics  as  follows:  "The  Christian  doc- 
trine of  morals  should  be  the  presentation  of  the  communion  with  God  which 
is  conditioned  upon  communion  with  Christ  the  Redeemer,  so  far  as  it  is  the 
motive  of  all  acts  of  the  Christian;  it  can  be  nothing  else  than  a  description 
of  that  manner  of  action  which  proceeds  from  the  supremacy  of  the  Christian 
determined,  religious  self -consciousness."  —  Chrisiliche  8%Ue,  s.  33. 


INTRODUCTION  3 

limited  entirely  to  the  historical  revelation  which  has 
been  given  in  the  Scriptures ;  for  the  new-creative  life 
and  power  of  Christ  have  worked,  and  are  still  working, 
in  all  the  spheres  of  human  life,  towards  a  Christian  goal 
of  history;  the  Christian  revelation  is  also  a  prophecy  of 
the  world  to  come.  Christian  ethics  becomes  thus  a  sci- 
ence not  only  of  the  biblical  morality,  but  also  of  the  whole 
moral  development  and  aim  of  humanity  according  to 
Christ ;  it  is  the  science  of  the  moral  contents,  progress, 
and  ends  of  human  life  under  the  formative  Christian 
Ideal.  Christian  ethics  must  look  on  towards  an  ethical 
eschatology,  as  well  as  proceed  from  an  ethical  history. 
It  will  be  a  comprehensive  survey,  from  the  moral  point  of 
view,  of  the  founding,  upbuilding,  and  promised  completion 
of  the  kingdom  of  God. 

.;  I.     CHRISTIAN   ETHICS   AND  METAPHYSICS 

All  ethics  involve  some  metaphysics  ]  for  ethics  is  the 
science  of  well-being,  and  well-being  involves  being.  Ethics 
presents  as  its  subject-matter  an  adjective  which  qualifies 
a  noun ;  a  moralist  who  should  seize  the  adjective  without 
reference  to  the  noun  —  who  would  understand  what  is 
well  without  relation  to  what  is  being  —  grasps  but  the 
shadow  and  misses  the  substance. 

The  profoundest  problems  of  ethics  and  metaphysics  are 
not  separated  in  the  simplest  moral  experiences  of  life. 
And  the  attempt  to  construct  an  ethical  theory  without 
any  well-considered  metaphysical  basis  is  apt  to  issue  not 
in  a  moral  science  without  assumptions,  but  in  an  ethics 
which  becomes  confused  in  philosophical  doubts.^ 

We  have  an  ethical  interest  in  determining,  so  far  as  we 
possibly  can,  whether  there  is  any  moral   reality  beneath 

1  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen,  for  example,  seeks  to  write  a  Science  of  Ethics  inde- 
pendently of  metaphysics.  But  in  his  concluding  chapter,  while  struggling 
to  keep  clear  of  metaphysical  problems,  he  lays  down  his  own  opinion  of 
"ontologies"  and  "sound  metaphysics"!  (pp.  447-9).  He  remarks  that  he 
might  be  content  "  to  build  upon  the  solid  earth.  You  may,  if  you  please,  go 
down  to  the  elephant  or  the  tortoise"  (p.  44G).  But  how  does  he  knoio  that 
the  earth  is  solid  on  which  he  builds  ?    That  is  a  question  of  metaphysics. 


4  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

the  moral  appearance  of  our  world.  It  is  an  ethical  ques- 
tion which  runs  at  once  into  metaphysics,  whether  all 
morality  is  simply  phenomenal  or  not.  The  ethical  inter- 
est of  life  is  not  satisfied  by  an  easy  avoidance  of  this 
question.  Indeed,  ethics  and  metaphysics  may  be  regarded 
as  the  two  sides  of  our  way  of  approach  towards  the  last 
realities  of  our  existence. 

Christian  ethics,  therefore,  does  not  reject  all  metaphysi- 
cal grounds  for  ethics.  It  starts  rather  with  a  Christian 
conception  of  being,  and  its  theistic  significance.  It  as- 
sumes that  God  is,  and  man  from  God.  Certain  general 
theistic  assumptions  will  underlie  our  special  discussion 
of  Christian  ethics. 

11.    CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  PHILOSOPHICAL  ETHICS 

While  Christian  ethics  finds,  as  has  just  been  said,  its 
immediate  source  and  special  sphere  in  the  moral  conscious- 
ness of  that  Christian  humanity  which  is  created  anew 
after  the  Spirit,  it  is  also  to  be  observed  that  Christian 
ethics,  in  order  that  it  may  be  scientific,  must  include  the 
facts  of  man's  natural  moral  life,  and  should  not  fall  into 
contradiction  with  the  reasonable  conclusions  of  philosoph- 
ical ethics.  For  the  second  creation  according  to  Christ 
fulfils  the  first  creation,  and  the  end  of  grace  cannot  prove 
contrary  to  the  beginning  of  nature.  The  spiritual  is  to 
the  natural  as  the  grain  which  ripens  in  the  sunshine  is  to 
the  seed  that  dies  in  the  earth.^  The  Christian  character, 
in  its  perfect  idea,  is  the  nature  of  man  completely  ethicized 
through  the  indwelling  of  the  Spirit.  Christianity  claims 
power  to  conserve  and  to  complete  all  natural  good  in  the 
kingdom  of  heaven.  Hence  the  science  of  Christian  ethics 
will  comprehend  the  truths  of  natural  science  ;  and  its 
moral  interpretations  of  life  will  harmonize  with  all  our 
possible  knowledge. 

Christian  ethics,  in  its  idea  and  aim,  is  something  more 
than  a  special  branch  of  moral  philosophy ;  it  is  ethics  in 
the   highest  —  ethics  raised   to   the    highest  power  —  the 

1 1  Cor.  XV.  37,  46. 


INTRODUCTION  5 

last  and  fullest  moral  interpretation  of  the  world  and  its 
history.  The  facts  of  the  natural  history  of  man,  and 
the  sifted  conclusions  of  philosophical  ethics,  will  be  its 
assumptions  and  its  postulates.  It  will  gather  these  up, 
and  bring  them  to  the  light  of  the  purest  and  most  lumi- 
nous moral  consciousness  of  all  history  —  even  the  mind 
that  was  in  Christ  Jesus.  These  philosophical  postulates 
with  which  we  must  begin  in  writing  on  Christian  ethics, 
will  themselves  be  subjected  in  turn  to  new,  searching 
tests,  and  to  severe  verification,  in  the  focus  of  the  Chris- 
tian consciousness  of  man.  The  effort  to  understand  and 
to  reflect  truly  the  regenerate  spiritual  mind  of  humanity 
will  throw  back  light  upon  the  natural  moral  conscious- 
ness of  man. 

Scientific  ethics  so-called  —  the  ethics  of  naturalism  — 
does  not  render  a  complete  induction  of  the  moral  facts 
of  our  history  unless  it  proceeds  to  include  also  in  its 
generalizations  the  ethics  of  the  best  Christian  conscious- 
ness of  life.  Until  that  is  done,  ethical  theories  and 
maxims  have  not  been  brought  to  the  light  and  submitted 
to  the  search  of  the  clearest  and  highest  moral  authority 
known  on  earth.  Yet  nothing  is  more  common  than  for 
writers  Avho  approach  the  inquiry  into  the  moral  history 
of  our  world  from  the  paths  of  natural  science,  to  ignore 
altogether  the  Christian  significance  and  the  Christian 
tests  of  moral  ideas,  as  though  the  ethical  consciousness 
of  Christianity  were  but  a  moral  episode  in  human  his- 
tory —  a  phenomenon  by  itself ;  as  though  the  whole 
Christian  consciousness,  with  its  rich  ethical  contents, 
stood  on  some  side-track  of  evolution,  and  were  therefore 
something  to  be  passed  by  in  the  scientific  pursuit  of  truth 
with  scarce  a  word  of  notice,  or  to  be  left  as  a  special  sub- 
ject for  the  investigation  of  those  who  are  inclined  to  it. 

But  this  confident  exclusiveness  of  naturalistic  ethics 
is  an  unscientific  habit,  as  it  would  be  unscientific  for  a 
chemist  to  refuse  to  apply  any  test  by  means  of  which  his 
combinations  might  be  subjected  to  further  analysis,  or  as 
it  would  seem  absurd  for  an  investigator  to  choose  to 
make  explorations  by  moonlight   instead  of  by  sunlight. 


6  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

Man's  moral  nature  is  to  be  read  in  all  possible  ligbts, 
and  to  be  brought  to  the  interpretation  of  its  own  holiest 
indwelling  truth.  Man  at  his  highest  moral  power  and 
in  his  intensest  spiritual  consciousness  is  the  ethical  fact 
to  be  investigated  and  explained.  A  satisfactory  account 
of  him  at  a  lower  moral  point  is  not  an  account  of  man  at 
his  supreme  moral  height.  A  thoroughly  scientific  ethics 
must  not  only  be  adequate  to  the  common  moral  sense  of 
men,  but  prove  true  also  to  the  moral  consciousness  of  the 
Son  of  man.  No  ethics  has  right  to  claim  to  be  thoroughly 
scientific,  or  to  offer  itself  as  the  only  science  of  ethics 
possible  to  us  in  our  present  experience,  until  it  has  sought 
to  enter  into  the  spirit  of  Christ,  and  has  brought  all  its 
analysis  and  theories  of  man's  moral  life  to  the  light  of 
the  luminous  ethical  personality  of  Jesus  Christ.  The 
conscience  of  man  which  is  formed  and  enlightened  by 
the  Spirit  of  Christ  is  a  psychological  fact  to  be  scien- 
tifically measured,  and  to  be  related  to  other  facts.  Pos- 
sibly some  ethical  assumptions  and  theories,  which  may 
seem  to  be  sufficient  interpretations  or  generalizations  of 
man's  moral  life  at  lower  stages  and  in  less  developed 
periods  of  his  history,  may  be  found  to  be  inadequate 
when  the  fullest,  highest,  and  clearest  moral  consciousness 
is  to  be  explained. 

Christian  ethics,  therefore,  by  its  interpretation  of  the 
most  ethicized  life  of  man  may  gain  right  and  power  to 
speak  the  last  word  amid  contending  theories  of  moral 
philosophy.  Such  authority  to  speak  the  final  word  can 
be  denied  to  it  only  by  proving  that  the  Christian  moral 
consciousness  is  not  the  most  ethicized  consciousness 
known  to  man ;  that  the  regenerate  mind  is  a  degenerate 
mind ;  that  the  Son  of  man  is  not  man  at  his  moral  best. 
If  on  the  whole,  and  fairly  interpreted,  the  Christian  ideal 
of  the  kingdom  of  God  is  the  highest  ethical  conception 
—  the  moral  type  of  society  most  fitted  to  survive  — 
which  the  development  of  the  world  has  as  yet  attamed ; 
if  the  Christian  consciousness,  taken  largely,  is  the  best 
product  of  the  moral  history  of  this  earth  ;  then  Chris- 
tian ethics,  which  is  the  science  of  this  regenerate  moral 


INTRODUCTION  7 

experience  of  man,  has  authority  as  the  highest  court  of 
appeal  among  the  philosophies  of  morals. 

The  relation  of  Christian  to  philosophical  ethics  is  thus 
seen  to  be  twofold;  it  presupposes  and  it  judges  them. 
What  an  apostle  claimed  for  the  spiritual  man  is  true  like- 
wise of  the  science  of  man's  spiritual  experience  in  its 
ethical  deliverances :  "  But  he  that  is  spiritual  judgeth  all 
things,  and  he  himself  is  judged  of  no  man."  ^  The  spirit- 
ual man  is  here  regarded  as  the  man  in  whom  the  highest 
and  truest  life  of  man  comes  to  self-consciousness,  and 
therefore  he  can  be  judged  by  no  man.  Hence  ethics  is 
to  receive  its  final  form  and  clarified  contents  in  the 
moral  consciousness  of  the  spiritual  man.  There  is  no 
further  appeal  from  the  judgment  of  the  spiritual  mind 
of  humanity. 

Although  philosophical  and  Christian  ethics  may  be 
separated  and  pursued  as  independent  disciplines,  the  dis- 
tinction between  them,  as  Dorner  has  observed,^  is  only 
empirical,  and  not  a  necessary  opposition ;  the  difference 
tends  to  disappear  in  proportion  as  the  philosophy  of  an 
age  becomes  Christianized,  and  the  Christianity  of  an  age 
becomes  rational  and  real.  No  necessary  and  permanent 
antagonism  can  be  admitted  between  reason  and  faith,  and 
consequently  the  ethics  of  reason  seeks  for  fulfilment  in 
the  ethics  of  faith. 


III.     CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND   PSYCHOLOGY 

* 

Ethics  is  sometimes  treated  as  a  branch  of  psychology. 
These  studies  are  too  vitally  related  to  be  held  apart 
even  for  analytical  purposes  without  peril  of  loss.  An 
ethics  without  psychological  assumptions  is  an  impossibil- 
ity. These  assumptions  may  be  concealed;  they  may  not 
have  been  thought  out ;  but  there  is  no  moral  treatise, 
not  even  the  most  clearly  scientific,  which  is  not  per- 
meated through  and  through  by  the  psychology  which  the 
writer  consciously  or  unconsciously,  intelligently  or  witli- 

1 1  Cor.  ii.  15.  ^  System  dcr  ChristUchen  Sittenlehre,  ss.  17,  24,  28. 


8  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

out  knowledge,  has  adopted  and  holds.  All  the  problems 
of  human  conduct  involve  theories  of  the  will,  and  can- 
not be  solved  Avithout  some  inquiry  into  moral  motives,  — 
that  is,  without  the  aid  of  psychology. 

-  Christian  ethics  cannot  claim  freedom  from  subjection 
to  the  processes  and  tests  of  modern  psychology ;  it  will 
have  also  its  own  contribution  to  make  to  this  study  as  it 
brings  out  the  psychology  of  the  regenerated  conscious- 
ness. There  may  be  some  truths  of  psychological  signif- 
icance to  be  learned  from  the  processes  of  spiritual 
experience  and  the  growth  and  increased  fruitfulness  of 
mental  life  under  the  influence  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ. 
The  results,  moreover,  of  the  experiments  of  physiologi- 
cal psychology  (which  in  their  way  are  interesting  and 
suggestive,  although  as  yet  not  illuminative  where  knowl- 
edge would  be  most  welcome)  are  to  be  read  in  the  light 
which  may  be  kindled  in  the  recesses  of  our  being  through 
the  operation  of  the  human  mind  and  will  in  the  freest 
and  most  powerful  spiritual  acts  and  self-determinations. 
At  this  preliminary  stage  of  our  discussion  we  wish  to 
acknowledge  the  constant  and  intimate  relation  which 
will  appear  throughout  between  Christian  ethics  and  psy- 
chological investigations.  Instead  of  regarding  it  as  a 
virtue  to  write  an  ethics  without  psychological  assump- 
tions, we  deem  it  to  be  the  far  more  excellent  way  to  gain 
an  ethics  which  shall  justify  itself  before  any  competent 
psychology. 

IV.   RELATION  OF  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  THEOLOGY 

In  the  scholasticism  of  the  middle  ages  ethics  Avas  treated 
in  connection  with  dogmatics,  and  in  subordination  to  the 
theology  of  the  Church.  The  natural  virtues,  according 
to  Aristotle  or  Plato,  were  clumsily  joined  to  the  super- 
natural graces  according  to  Thomas  Aquinas.  Until  the 
unity  and  continuity  of  the  natural  and  the  supernatural 
had  been  realized  in  some  profounder  and  simpler  Chris- 
tian philosophy,  the  true  and  intimate  relation  of  nature 
and  grace  in  ethics   could  not  be   apprehended.     Conse- 


INTRODUCTION  V 

quently  the  mediaeval  ethics  presented  a  series  of  labored 
efforts  to  divide  the  moral  domain  of  life  between  the 
world  and  the  Church,  and  to  determine  with  many  defini- 
tions the  metes  and  bounds  of  the  moral  and  the  theologi- 
cal virtues.  The  dualism  between  the  natural  and  the 
supernatural,  which  characterized  the  scholastic  philosophy, 
ran  also  as  a  widening  chasm  through  the  ethics  of  the 
Church.  Across  it  casuistry  sought  to  throw  its  ques- 
tionable bridges;  beyond  the  common  duties  which  are 
required  of  all  men,  theology  found  room  for  works  of 
supererogation  and  the  "  evangelical  counsels  "  ;  —  for  acts 
which  are  not  absolutely  required  by  the  law,  but  which 
may  be  deemed  advisable  as  possessed  of  some  supermoral 
merit. 

The  introduction  and  pursuit  of  moral  philosophy  as  a 
distinct  study  marked  in  the  early  literature  of  Protes- 
tantism the  rise  of  a  new  and  powerful  tendency  which 
was  not  to  be  subjected  to  the  authority  of  the  Church. 
Rothe  regards  it  as  an  epoch-making  event  when  George 
Calixtus  constructed  a  moral  philosophy  independently  of 
the  Church.^  Certainly  it  would  be  idle  now  to  think  of 
forcing  ethics  back  under  the  control  of  dogmatic  the- 
ology. The  moral  consciousness  of  our  age  has  grown 
peculiarly  impatient  of  Church  dogma.  But  can  ethics 
escape  entirely  from  the  touch  of  theological  influence? 
What  is  the  true  relation  between  Christian  ethics  and 
theology  ? 

In  the  gospels  we  observe  that  the  teaching  of  Jesus 
is  ethical  and  religious  rather  than  metaphysical  and  theo- 
logical. His  teaching  involves,  it  is  true,  a  divine  meta- 
physics ;  but  it  is  directly  ethical  and  religious  rather 
than  theological  or  systematic.  Dogmas  may  be  logically 
derived  from  many  of  Jesus'  words ;  but  immediately,  as 
he  spake  them,  they  were  spirit  and  they  were  life.  His 
words  bring  to  light  the  primary  and  essential  ethical  rela- 
tions between  God  and  man.  The  two  commandments, 
in  which  Jesus  summed  up  the  law  and  the  prophets, 
centre  upon  a  word  of  simple  and  supreme  ethical  signifi- 

1  Theologische  Ethik,  vol.  i.  s.  15,  Anm.  2. 


10  CHRISTIAiT  ETHICS 

cance,  —  love.  It  is  by  no  means  to  be  overlooked  that 
Jesus'  moral  teachings  were  at  the  same  time  religious ; 
that  the  morality  of  the  gospels  is  pervaded  throughout 
with  the  religious  spirit ;  but  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  the 
-more  distinctively  theological  truths,  such  as  the  Lord's 
unique  relation  to  the  Fatlier,  and  man's  relations  to  God 
and  knoAvledge  of  Him,  are  approached  in  Jesus'  teaching 
on  the  moral  rather  than  the  metaphysical  side  ;  are  ex- 
pressed in  the  language  of  moral  experience  and  measured 
in  terms  of  ethical  value.  The  religious  teaching  of  the 
gospels  is  simple  and  universally  intelligible  because  it  is 
instinct  with  moral  life  and  appeals  directly  to  the  moral 
consciousness  of  men. 

The  more  dogmatic  teaching  of  the  epistles  rests  on  this 
religious-ethical  truth  of  the  gospels.  Reason  is  called 
sooner  or  later  to  think  out  ethical-religious  truths  under 
metaphysical  conceptions,  and  the  dogmatic  theology  of 
the  Church  is  the  reasonable  endeavor  to  harmonize  the 
truths  of  Christianity  in  a  system  of  thought.  But  what- 
ever may  be  the  function  of  theology,  the  primary  ethical 
elements  of  religion  should  be  distinguished,  and  not 
allowed  to  become  lost  or  confounded,  in  any  system  of 
divinity  which  may  be  built  up  philosophically,  or  taught 
with  authority  in  the  creeds  of  the  Church.  Christian 
ethics  must  be  allowed  to  follow  closely,  and  should 
remain  true  to  the  ethical-religious  consciortsness,  without 
prevention  or  prejudice  from  Christian  dogmatics.  More- 
over, whatever  postulates  Christian  ethics  may  borrow 
from  Christian  theology,  it  must  bring  these  to  its  own 
moral  tests  and  judgment.  We  cannot  consent  to  lower 
the  Christian  conscience  before  any  churchly  tradition,  or 
to  yield  for  a  moment  the  Christian  sense  of  right  to  any 
supposed  dogmatic  interest.  The  question,  "  Shall  not  the 
Judge  of  all  the  earth  do  right  ? "  is  an  ancient  appeal 
directly  to  the  religious  conscience,  which  Christian  ethics 
should  always  keep  open  and  sacred.  Even  in  the  most 
authoritative  period  of  the  reign  of  Church  dogma,  this 
direct  appeal  to  the  Christian  moral  consciousness  was 
never  wholly  closed  and   forgotten.     Augustine  was  not 


INTRODUCTION  ll 

unmoved  by  the  living  voice  of  God  in  the  soul  of  his 
churchly  orthodoxy;  and  John  Calvin  did  not  push  his 
crushing  logic  along  the  ways  of  the  divine  decrees  beyond 
all  restraint  of  the  moral  Christian  sense.  A  Puritan 
theologian  of  the  seventeenth  century,  wearied  of  "the 
contentious  learning"  of  his  times,  wrote  a  plea  for 
"  Practical  Divinity "  as  "  of  far  greater  concernment 
unto  all,"  and  appealed  directly  to  the  "life  of  God  in 
the  soul  of  a  believer  "  as  the  test  of  truth.^  Reformations 
have  gro^vn  out  of  the  ethical  protest  of  the  Christian 
mind  against  inherited  dogmas.  Old  theology  is  always 
becoming  new  in  the  vitalizing  influence  of  ethics.  The 
Church  will  not  long  refuse  to  bring  any  article  of  its 
faith  to  the  test  of  its  most  Christlike  sense  of  love  and 
fairness.  It  is  reason  enough  for  doubting  and  for  re- 
studying  any  traditional  teaching  or  received  word  of  doc- 
trine, if  it  be  felt  to  harass  or  to  confuse  the  Christian 
conscience  of  an  age.  Nothing  can  abide  as  true  in  the- 
ology which  does  not  prove  its  genuineness  under  the 
ever  renewed  searching  of  the  Christian  moral  sense  ; 
nothing  is  permanent  fruit  of  the  teaching  of  Christ  which 
does  not  show  itself  to  be  morally  Christlike.  Even  a 
primitive  Christian  tradition  might  be  insufficient  author- 
ity for  imputing  to  Christ,  and  including  in  the  doctrine 
of  Christianity,  any  word  of  teaching  which  should  prove 
to  be  contrary  to  the  character  and  spirit  of  the  Christ  of 
the  gospels.  Still  less  can  we  allow  in  Christian  ethics 
any  dogmatic  belief  which  would  put  in  bonds  the  Chris- 
tian ethical  principle  itself;  —  as,  for  instance,  the  tenet 
that  morality  is  dependent  upon  the  divine  will,  that  the 
distinction  between  right  and  wrong  is  a  created  distinc- 
tion, which  God  might  have  willed  otherwise.  Christian 
ethics  cannot  consent  to  commit  suicide  in  any  supposed 
interest  of  theology. 

1  John  Dury,  An  Earnest  Plea  for  Gospel  Communion,  London,  1654.  The 
whole  passage  referred  to  is  too  long  to  quote.  The  following  sentences  illus- 
trate its  quite  modern  tone:  "Godliness,  therefore,  which  is  the  practice  of 
divine  Truth,  is  the  measure  of  all  intellectual  truths ;  for  whatever  matter  of 
knowledge  is  not  proportionate,  subordinate,  and  subservient  unto  the  produc- 
tion of  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  a  Believer,  is  not  to  be  received  as  a 
divine  Truth  "  (pp.  5  sq.). 


12  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

This  assertion  of  the  authority  of  the  ethical  in  its  own 
domain,  is  not  at  the  same  time  a  denial  of  all  dependence 
of  Christian  ethics  upon  Christian  theology.  A  necessary 
and  legitimate  subordination  and  service  of  the  former  to 
the  latter  is  to  be  recognized  in  two  relations :  (1)  Chris- 
tian ethics  finds  material  for  its  science  in  the  truths 
which  are  presented  in  the  person,  life,  and  teaching  of 
Christ.  (2)  Christian  ethics  has  before  it  the  task  of 
bringing  Christian  beliefs  to  moral  interpretation  and  har- 
mony.    In  this  respect  it  is  a  servant  of  theology. 

As  ethics  in  general  cannot  proceed  in  entire  indepen- 
dence of  men's  beliefs  concerning  themselves  and  the  uni- 
verse in  which  they  live,  so  Christian  ethics  is  to  be  an 
application  of  Christian  beliefs  to  the  conduct  of  life.  We 
cannot  construct  a  Christian  theory  of  living  without  con- 
stant reference  to  the  Christian  ideas  of  being.  While 
the  imitation  of  Christ  is  to  be  distinguished  from  the 
intellectual  conception  of  the  nature  or  offices  of  Christ, 
still  to  follow  Christ  in  his  life  implies  some  belief  in  the 
worthiness  of  the  Christ  to  go  before  us  as  Master  and 
Lord.  And  these  Christian  beliefs,  as  already  observed, 
will  be  purified  and  enriched  in  following  the  Christ. 
There  is  light  in  love. 

While  Christian  ethics  finds  its  subject-matter  in  the 
same  Christian  consciousness  of  man  from  which  theology 
derives  its  materials  for  dogmatic  construction,  each  of 
these  sciences  will  regard  the  whole  contents  of  the  Chris- 
tian consciousness  (including  historic  revelation)  from  its 
own  point  of  view.  Ethics  holds  the  contents  of  Christian 
faith  in  immediate  and  constant  relation  to  the  will  and 
character  of  the  Christian  man  and  the  Christian  society. 
Dogmatics  is  concerned  with  the  Christian  truths  as  mate- 
rials of  knowledge  to  be  combined  with  all  our  knowledge 
in  a  Christian  conception  of  the  world  and  God. 

The  distinction  has  been  made  by  Wuttke  {Christian  Ethics^  vol  1. 
p.  22)  that  ethics  is  predominantly  a  subjective  science,  while  dogmatics 
is  predominantly  objective ;  that  the  latter  furnishes  the  materials  of 
knowledge,  while  the  former  has  to  do  with  the  relation  of  these  known 
materials  of  Christian  life  to  the  will  and  the  ends  of  conduct.     There  is 


INTRODUCTION  13 

evident  truth  in  this  distinction,  yet  we  cannot  admit  that  the  moral  con- 
sciousness is  simply  subjective  :  there  is  a  moral  knowing  as  well  as  will- 
ing ;  there  is  a  knowing  for  willing  and  through  willing,  a  knowledge  to 
be  gained  in  willing.  The  will  and  the  mind  are  not  two  separate  com- 
partments of  being.  An  analysis  of  our  mental  states  into  their  elements 
is  not  a  true  description  of  the  living  consciousness  in  the  integrity  and 
unity  of  its  vital  processes.  The  ethical  consciousness  is  a  knowing  in 
willing,  and  a  willing  in  knowing  ;  it  has  objective  validity  (if  that  may 
be  allowed  in  any  sense  to  man's  knowledge)  as  well  as  subjective  worth 
or  obligation.  Moral  knowing  is  real  knowing,  if  the  life  of  man  touches 
at  any  point  the  realities  of  things. 

Christian  ethics  naturally  follows  Christian  theology, 
both  because  it  assumes  a  certain  acquaintance  with  the 
Christian  truths,  and  also  because  it  offers  a  further  re- 
vision of  theological  conceptions  in  the  light  of  the  Chris- 
tian moral  consciousness.  All  things  are  to  be  brought 
to  the  ethical  test  of  the  life  of  the  Christ.  "  But  if  any 
man  hath  not  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  he  is  none  of  his."^ 
The  ethics  of  the  Spirit  is  the  final  judgment ;  the  life  is 
the  light  of  men. 


V.     THE   RELATION   OF   ETHICS   AND   RELIGION 

Scarcely  any  question  in  moral  philosophy  has  been  so 
repeatedly  brought  into  discussion  as  the  question  of  the 
dependence  of  morality  on  religion.  It  has  been  often 
claimed,  on  the  one  hand,  that  morality  has  its  beginnings 
and  derives  its  sanctions  from  religion  and  religious  mo- 
tives, and  is  the  consequence  even  of  the  revealed  will  of 
God.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  asserted  that  moral  codes 
are  social  in  their  origin ;  that  men  must  learn  to  live 
together  by  some  rule,  that  is,  morally;  and  that  even 
without  the  guidance  and  help  of  religious  ideas  and 
customs,  social  necessity  would  compel  some  moral  organ- 
ization and  control  of  communities  of  men.  Positivists, 
moreover,  have  not  been  slow  to  discover  defects  in  men's 
moral  codes,  ancient  and  modern,  which  may  be  attributed 
to  the  retardation  or  corruption  of  ethical  ideas  by  relig- 
ious traditions ;    and  it  has  been   claimed   not  only  that 

1  Rom.  viii.  9. 


14  CHRTSTTATf   ETHICS 

morality  may  be  entirely  independent  of  religion  for  its 
basis  of  obligation,  but  also  that  it  might  often  profitably 
jdispense  with  added  religious  sanctions.  Some  educated 
tind  ethical  souls  no  longer  require  the  support  of  religious 
beliefs  for  the  honorable  conduct  of  life,  although,  accord- 
ing to  Mr.  Spencer,!  there  still  may  be  some  lingering  pop- 
ular need  for  the  enforcement  of  moral  duties  by  religious 
fears.  Mr.  Mill  admits  the  great  services  which  belief  in 
the  supernatural  has  rendered  to  morality  in  ''  the  early 
stages  of  human  development " ;  ^  but  he  remarks  that 
''early  religious  teaching  has  owed  its  power  over  mankind 
rather  to  its  being  early  than  to  its  being  religious."  ^ 

Positivism  itself,  however,  while  banishing  the  ordinary 
religious  beliefs  from  the  moral  sphere,  cannot  rule  its 
own  kino-dom  without  sooner  or  later  inventino-  some 
makeshift  for  a  religion.  Comte,  as  is  well  known,  at  the 
close  of  his  positive  philosophy,  gave  back  to  poetry  and 
the  worship  of  humanity  the  religious  motives  and  sanc- 
tions Avhich  he  had  banished  w^ith  the  age  of  theology. 
And  Mr.  Mill  himself,  notwithstanding  his  reluctance  to 
follow  Comte  in  the  new  cultus  of  humanity,  nevertheless, 
in  the  same  essay  in  which  he  would  prove  that  morality 
is  no  longer  dependent  on  religious  beliefs,  could  not  quite 
dispense  with  the  name  religion  for  the  supremacy  of  the 
moral  sentiments  which  he  thinks  are  destined  to  survive 
as  the  worthiest  and  the  most  useful.  "  To  call  these  sen- 
timents," he  remarks,  "by  the  name  morality,  exclusively 
of  any  other  title,  is  claiming  too  little  for  them.  They 
are  a  real  religion ; "  etc.*  So  positivism,  after  escaping 
from  the  age  of  theology,  borrows  the  old  name,  and  ends 
its  days  by  dreaming  of  an  ideal  sentiment  which  is  to  be 
its  religion.  Naturalistic  ethics,  in  spite  of  itself,  cannot 
rest  content  without  discovering  or  inventing  something 
to  answer  for  human  life  the  purpose  of  a  religion.  But  a 
philosophy  which  finds  itself  compelled  to  spell  some  com- 
mon nouns  with  capitals,  in  order  that  it  may  Avorship  them, 
can  hardly  deny  the  moral  necessity  of  some  religion. 

1  First  Pi-inciples,  s.  32,  p.  117.  2  f'tnuy  of  Rdi(jion,  p.  100. 

3  Ibid.  p.  83.  4  ma,  p.  109. 


INTRODUCTION  15 

1.  If  we  turn  to  history  in  the  desire  to  determine  the 
actual  relation  between  religion  and  morals,  we  observe 
(so  far  as  we  have  historical  materiab  for  our  judgment), 
that  some  religion  and  some  morality  are  usually  found 
existing  together  among  men ;  there  are  few,  if  ai:y,  clear 
and  decided  instances  of  the  presence  of  either  of  these  fac- 
tors without  some  existence  also  of  the  other.  The  two 
have  grown  together,  and,  so  far  as  we  can  discover,  have 
usually  sprung  up  together.  Throughout  known  history 
the  two  powers  of  human  life,  religion  and  morality,  have 
been  co-existent  and  co-o^^erative.  It  may  be  true,  as  Mr. 
Mill  contends,  that  morals  in  Greece  derived  little  benefit 
from,  and  indeed  became  exceptionally  independent  of, 
religious  beliefs ;  yet  the  political  morals  of  Greece  were 
religious  at  least  in  their  recognition  of  the  social  order  as 
ordained  by  the  gods ;  and  the  ideas  of  law  and  nemesis 
were  not  irreligious  conceptions  in  the  Greek  ethics. 

In  Israel  religious  and  moral  obligation  coalesced,  and 
the  history  of  Israel  is  at  once  a  history  of  the  develop- 
ment of  morals  and  of  a  j^i'ogressive  revelation  of  God. 
The  divine  evolution  of  Israel  proceeds  on  parallel  lines  of 
moral  and  religious  growth.  Indeed,  these  two  elements, 
the  moral  and  the  religious,  have  been  so  interwoven  and 
blended  in  the  whole  texture  and  color  of  the  historical 
development  and  life  of  humanity,  that  it  is  not  easy  to 
separate  them  at  any  particular  point,  and  to  discern  with 
13recision  what  results  should  be  attributed  to  the  one 
factor  and  what  to  the  other  element.  The  earliest  and 
least  degrees  of  the  religious  consciousness  contain  implic- 
itly some  moral  potency  and  manifest  some  moral  reac- 
tions ;  and,  conversely,  an  awakening  of  the  moral  con- 
sciousness is  usually  accompanied  by  a  profound  stirring 
of  the  religious  depths  of  human  nature.  While  religious 
teaching  has  direct  influence  on  the  morals  of  a  people, 
it  is  equally  true  that  any  advance  of  moral  ideas  will 
become  reformatory  of  religious  doctrines.  No  religious 
teaching  can  remain,  if  its  idea  of  God  is  discovered  to  be 
immoral.  All  attempts  absolutely  to  divorce  these  two 
original  and  allied  elements  of  man's  being,  his  religious 


16  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

faith  and  his  moral  sense,  seem  to  be  impossible ;  by  some 
Power,  creative  of  our  nature,  they  have  been  so  joined 
together  that  man  cannot  put  them  asunder. 

2.  This  general  interdependence  of  morals  and  religion 
we  must  not,  however,  press  so  far  as  to  assert  that  either 
is  derived  from  the  other,  or  has  no  independence  of  the 
other. 

When  we  have  admitted  that  there  is  an  historical  and 
an  organic  correlation  between  the  religious  and  moral 
elements  of  human  life,  it  does  not  follow  that  we  can  at 
once  go  farther  and  declare  either  that  religion  is  only  a 
larger  reflection  on  the  universe  of  man's  inward  moral 
feeling,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  that  human  morality  is 
absolutely  dependent  for  its  power  upon  conscious  belief 
in  God  and  immortality,  or  any  of  the  specific  truths  of 
Christianity.  For  no  ethical  characteristic  of  the  present 
age  is  more  familiar  than  the  existence  of  high  moral 
development  and  devotion  to  pure  moral  ideals  in  individ- 
uals who  have  broken  with  all  religious  traditions,  and 
who  hold  in  abeyance,  if  they  have  not  lost,  their  faith  in 
a  personal  God  and  their  personal  immortality. 

In  individual  examples,  a  large  and  lofty  morality  is  seen 
to  survive  without  obvious  religious  root  or  support.  It  is 
another  question,  however,  whether  this  apparent  indepen- 
dence of  individuals  from  religious  motives  could  have  been 
sustained  except  in  a  society  which  had  long  been  pre- 
pared and  enriched  for  such  exceptional  moral  growths 
by  the  influences  of  religious  beliefs  ;  — these  persons  have 
drawn  nourishment  even  from  the  decay  of  the  faiths  in 
which  the  seeds  of  their  moral  life  were  first  planted:  and 
it  is  a  further  and  still  more  important  question  Avhether 
a  vigorous  and  fruitful  national  morality  could  survive  in 
a  soil  where  all  the  springs  of  religion  had  become  dry. 
We  have  in  history  no  circle  of  facts  large  enough  to  justify 
the  generalization  that  society  can  give  up  all  religion  and 
eventually  prosper.  The  historic  indications  seem  to  point 
the  other  way.  Loss  of  religious  faith  (as  distinct  from 
dogmas)  among  the  people  has  never  yet  been  a  sign  of 
increasing  moral  vitality.      Yet  while  there  is  no   moral 


INTRODUCTION  17 

history  of  a  people  to  justify  the  confident  assertion  that 
religion  may  be  safely  cast  aside  as  an  outgrown  garment 
in  the  future  progress  of  mankind,  it  may  be  admitted  not 
only  that  individual  instances  may  be  adduced  of  the  con- 
tinuance of  moral  excellence  after  the  loss  of  religious 
beliefs,  but  also  that  a  considerable  degree  of  moral  attain- 
ment  and  social  firmness  may  be  conceived  as  possible,  at 
least  for  a  while,  even  in  the  absence  of  definite  or  positive 
popular  belief  in  a  divine  Governor  or  a  future  state.  The 
political  morality  of  the  Grecian  systems  of  ethics  was  not 
directly  dependent  upon  the  religious  ideas  amid  which 
they  grew  up,  and  we  can  keep  the  one  while  discarding 
the  other.  Man  is  by  nature  a  moral,  as  he  is  by  nature 
a  political  being.  "  Conscience,"  as  Dr.  Martineau  has 
remarked,  "  may  act  as  human,  before  it  is  discovered  to  be 
divine."  ^ 

We  must  recognize,  therefore,  alike  in  the  interest  of 
morality  and  religion  a  certain  relative  independence  of 
each  from  the  other.  Each  has  life  in  itself ;  each  possesses 
its  own  sphere,  and  is  clothed  with  its  own  authority. 
Neither  can  be  absolutely  identified  with  the  other,  or  sub- 
ordinated to  the  other.  Religion,  while  it  must  bring  its 
whole  conception  of  the  world  and  idea  of  God  to  the  test 
of  the  life  of  each  succeeding  age,  is  in  itself  more  than 
morality,  and  will  refuse  to  be  reduced  entirely  to  strict 
ethical  terms.  Religion  represents  a  personal  relationship 
—  man's  sonship  from  God's  Fatherhood ;  and  the  trust 
and  obedience  which  religion  enjoins  are  personal  and 
vital  relations  which  cannot  be  comprehended  under  any 
impersonal  sovereignty  of  law  or  right. 

On  the  other  hand,  morality  as  the  condition  and  law  of 
social  well-being  may  be  studied  and  developed  without 
constant  reference  to  the  religious  questions  of  the  origin 
or  the  ultimate  significance  of  human  society  and  man's 
sense  of  moral  obligation.  Moreover,  it  has  often  been 
indispensable  to  moral  progress  that  the  encumbrance  of 
dead  and  burdensome  religious  beliefs  should  be  thrown  off, 
and  that  the  science  of  human  well-being  should  be  pur- 

1  Beli(/ion,  vol.  i.  p.  20. 


18  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS      | 

sued  with  independent  ethical  investigation.  Whenever 
the  Church  hinders  such  free  development  of  social  science, 
it  is  in  need  itself  of  ethical  reformation.  The  true  unity 
of  the  religious  and  the  moral  requires  that  each  power 
should  work  freely  in  its  own  sphere. 

3.  Religion  and  ethics,  while  thus  relatively  independ- 
ent, are  complementary  elements  of  man's  life.  Ultimately 
they  belong  together.  Each  originally  implies  the  other, 
and  in  the  perfected  life  both  are  made  one. 

We  cannot  think  any  ethical  question  out  without  rais- 
ing some  religious  question.  We  cannot  make  any  relig- 
ious belief  real  unless  we  put  moral  contents  into  it.  Alike 
as  a  good  to  be  desired,  a  virtue  to  be  attained,  or  a  duty 
to  be  rendered,  religion  itself  becomes  a  part  of  morality, 
and  belongs  to  a  true  and  complete  ethics  of  life.  And, 
conversely,  every  moral  term  —  such  as  approbation,  duty, 
freedom,  and  any  other  ethical  concept  —  has  its  religious 
side  and  passes  easily  over  into  a  religious  meaning.  The 
apparent  dualism  is  not  real,  for  morals  and  religion  are 
the  two  relations  and  aspects  of  one  unfolding  spiritual 
life,  which,  although  thus  logically  separable,  is  not  divided 
in  the  unity  of  the  personal  consciousness. 

4.  Ethics  and  Religion  require  a  similar  transcendental 
postulate.  Man's  rational  consciousness  alike  on  its  moral 
and  its  religious  side  has  a  transcendent  environment ;  and 
our  sense  of  absolute  dependence  and  of  absolute  obliga- 
tion imply  the  same  source  of  our  humanity  in  the  Eternal 
One  from  whom  we  have  come. 

Philosophic  doubt  may  refuse  to  receive  any  definition 
of  the  supreme  Power  or  Origin  alike  of  our  consciousness 
of  personal  being  and  moral  obligation  ;  a  man  may  remain, 
if  he  will,  an  agnostic  both  in  his  ethical  and  his  religious 
consciousness  of  himself;  but  the  primary  and  essential 
fact  is  not  to  be  denied  that  our  human  sense  of  being  and 
of  well-being  touches  something,  whether  known  or  un- 
known, beyond  itself;  faces  some  larger  environment; 
exists  in  conscious  dependence  on  some  Being  and  Good 
which  were  before  us,  and  which  are  greater  than  we. 

For  purposes  of  analysis  and  investigation,  it  is  true, 


INTEODUCTION  19 

any  subject  may  be  isolated  from  its  environment; — an 
organ  or  a  piece  of  tissue  may  be  separated  from  the 
body,  or  one  body  may  be  held  apart  from  the  entire 
system  of  organic  relations  in  which  it  exists.  But  we 
can  onl}'  subject  dead  tissue  to  this  analysis.  We  have 
to  take  the  life  before  we  can  divide  any  organ  with 
our  scalpels,  or  examine  tissue  under  our  microscopes. 
Similarly  the  moral  consciousness  of  man  may  be  sepa- 
rated from  his  whole  consciousness  of  spiritual  being,  and 
for  purposes  of  analysis,  and  the  ascertainment  of  certain 
definite  results,  it  may  be  investigated  without  any  refer- 
ence to  its  relations  to  the  super-sensible  and  transcendent 
environment  of  man's  spiritual  life.  But  it  is  the  dead, 
not  the  living  moral  consciousness,  which  can  be  so  dis- 
sected. And  when  the  results  of  the  analysis  thus  ob- 
tained are  confidently  presented  as  the  whole  contents  of 
man's  moral  nature,  and  their  meagreness  pronounced  to 
be  the  entire  truth  which  may  be  know^n  of  man's  being 
and  destiny,  then  we  need  only  refer  to  the  living  moral 
consciousness  in  the  actual  life  of  humanity  as  the  wit- 
ness for  other  and  higher  elements,  not  unknown  to  the 
"  vital  soul,"  which  are  real  and  vibrant,  and  not  to  be 
silenced  in  the  heart  of  man.  Indeed,  it  is  a  travesty  of 
the  scientific  method  in  ethics  to  regard  the  individual 
man  as  a  part  of  the  "  social  tissue,"  and  then  to  refuse 
to  take  the  slightest  account  of  such  impulsions  or  impli- 
cations as  affect  that  social  tissue  through  its  relation  to 
some  larger  spiritual  environment ;  to  refuse  even  to 
raise  the  inquiry  whether  that  social  tissue  presents  evi- 
dence of  belonging  itself  to  some  greater,  cosmical  unity, 
or  spiritual  order  of  being,  in  which  humanity  exists,  and 
in  the  all-encompassing  relations  of  which  we  live  and 
move  and  have  our  being.  It  would  not  be  scientific  to 
regard  an  organ  as  separate  from  the  body,  ignoring  either 
the  adaptations  of  the  organ  to  the  body,  or  the  possible 
reactions  of  the  body  on  the  organ.  Yet  Mr.  Leslie 
Stephen  holds  that  scientific  ethics  has  to  do  with 
observed   facts,  not   with   transcendental   considerations.^ 

1  Science  of  Ethics,  p.  36. 


20  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

But  the  transcendental  principles  may  be  resident  in,  and 
reveal  themselves  as  the  vital  implications  of,  the  observed 
facts  of  the  "  social  tissue,"  —  as  the  life  of  the  whole 
body  pulses  through  each  particular  organ.  We  do  not 
get  rid  scientifically  of  the  transcendental  simply  by  shut- 
ting our  eyes  to  the  signs  and  evidences  of  it.  A  question 
of  the  first  ethical  interest  is,  whether  our  human  moral 
consciousness  has  any  organic  relation  with  a  cosmical 
moral  order?  whether  it  is  in  its  living  movement  and 
power  wholly  of  this  earth  earthy  ?  Are  we  quite  through 
with  the  known  or  at  least  partly  disclosed  truth  of  the 
moral  life  of  humanity,  when  we  have  observed  the  rela- 
tions of  the  individual  cells  in  the  social  tissue  in  which, 
by  the  evolution  of  life,  they  have  been  combined  ?  Are 
there  no  nerve  forces  running  through  this  human  tissue 
which  bring  into  it  excitations  from  without,  by  which 
every  moment  the  internal  processes  are  affected  and  even 
its  structural  formation  may  be  modified  ?  We  have  not 
completed  a  true  scientific  study  of  ethics  so  long  as  we 
have  evaded  the  investigation  of  any  and  every  trace  we 
may  find  of  the  existence  of  a  moral  ontological  environ- 
ment, and  the  felt  influences  in  the  life  of  man  of  the 
larger  moral  universe  in  which  his  life  may  have  part  and 
share. 

We  can  pursue  the  study  of  terrestrial  physics  as  a  sepa- 
rate discipline,  but  we  cannot  have  a  complete  physical 
description  of  this  earth  without  some  astronomy.  The 
natural  history  of  the  earth  runs  back  into  the  star-dust. 
We  cannot  understand  the  formation  of  the  world,  or  its 
present  stability,  without  assuming  at  least  the  first  prin- 
ciples of  heaven's  law  and  order.  So  ethics  without  any 
transcendental  assumptions  is  like  physics  without  astron- 
omy. Ethics  is  not  complete  without  some  attempt  to 
set  human  conduct  and  history  in  its  real  cosmical  envi- 
ronment. Otherwise  the  most  influential  and  persistent 
moral  factors  are  left  untouched  and  unexplained.  An 
adequate  and  resolute  science  of  ethics  will  require  us, 
not  to  drop  with  contemptuous  indifference  the  high  task, 
but  to  think  out  to  the  uttermost  the  metaphysical  and 


INTRODUCTION  21 

ontological  implications  of  ethics.  Should  the  ethical  field 
be  abandoned  entirely  to  writers  who  are  content  to  close 
their  eyes  to  all  transcendental  suggestions  of  moral  expe- 
rience, then  the  whole  higher  interest  of  ethical  inquiries, 
as  it  has  been  felt  by  the  great  moralists  and  philosophers 
from  Plato  down,  would  be  forfeited,  and  forfeited  too  at 
the  demand  of  a  partial  science  to  satisfy  a  partial  method, 
at  the  cost  of  ethical  courage,  thoroughness,  and  persis- 
tenc}-. 

A  moral  philosopher  like  Mr.  Green  in  his  approach  to 
ethical  problems  from  the  spiritual  side,  and  his  willing- 
ness to  learn  their  spiritual  significance,  has  as  much  war- 
rant for  his  appearance  on  the  ethical  field,  and  as  much 
occasion  for  the  use  of  his  philosophic  method  of  inquiry 
into  ethical  facts,  as  Mr.  Stephen  has  for  his  naturalistic 
pursuit  of  moral  inquiries.  For  the  ethical  field  lies  open 
in  both  directions,  —  towards  nature  and  towards  spirit, 
—  and  neither  gate  of  it,  that  looking  into  the  natural,  or 
that  opening  towards  the  spiritual,  can  be  regarded  as 
closed  by  a  truly  scientific  investigator. 

The  moral  ideal  —  our  haunting  human  sense  of  some 
supreme  good — contains  in  itself  a  certain  super-histori- 
cal, if  not  supernatural  truth  and  grace :  it  has  always 
shone  before  men  as  an  ideal  not  realized  as  yet  —  the 
vision  of  something  diviner  to  be  loved  and  followed  —  a 
dream  of  some  perfection  yet  to  be  revealed  beyond  the 
conception  of  the  human  heart.  The  moral  ideal  as  a  fact 
within  our  experience  is  also  a  fact  which  has  not  been 
given  entirely  from  our  experience.  The  ideal  of  human- 
ity is  itself  above  the  past  or  present  experience  of  human- 
ity. It  rises  over  the  exalted  spirits  of  our  race,  like  the 
dawn  on  the  mountains,  from  beyond  our  horizons.  Hence 
the  contents  of  the  moral  ideal  cannot  be  fully  determined 
inductively  from  history.^ 

1  Ulrici  argues  at  length  that  it  is  impossible  to  derive  the  ethical  ideas  from 
experience;  the  idea,  he  maintains,  of  the  perfect  form,  or  the  perfect  man,  is 
not  derived  throitf/h  experience,  although  not  without  experience.  —  Goit  und 
der  Menfich,  vol.  ii.  s.  81  ff.  Mr.  Green  reasons  that  it  is  impossible  to  give  a 
definition  of  the  supreme  good  because  a  man  "  cannot  know  what  his  capa- 
bilities are  till  they  are  realized."  —Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  p.  204.    There  is 


22  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

Ethics  cannot  be  comprehended  in  all  its  elemental  facts, 
vital  forces,  and  living  processes,  if  the  presence  and  felt 
influence  in  an  age  of  ideal  truth  and  being  which  history 
has  not  contained,  are  not  recognized  and  revered.  For 
humanity  exists,  self-consciously,  as  something  greater  than 
its  present  realization,  and  for  ideal  ends  of  being  In  the 
noblest  moral  consciousness  there  is  some  presentiment  of 
worlds  unrealized  as  yet.  Humanity  not  only  exists  in 
itself,  but  also,  to  use  the  fine  apostolic  phrase,  ''  unto  all 
the  fulness  of  God."  ^ 

Man's  moral  consciousness  in  its  spiritual  suggestiveness 
requires  interpretation  as  a  prophecy,  besides  critical  un- 
derstanding as  an  historical  record.  Conscience  is  a  reve- 
lation as  truly  as  it  is  a  history.  Ethics  therefore  cannot 
be  thought  through  without  some  exercise  of  prophetic  in- 
sight. Moral  science,  as  has  been  admitted,  begins  with 
observed  facts,  and  should  follow  its  own  metliods  of  in- 
vestigation independently  of  religion  ;  but  after  all  proper 
historical  and  critical  data  of  ethics  have  been  gathered 
and  sifted,  the  spirit  of  the  whole  volume  of  man's  moral 
history  remains  to  be  discerned  and  followed.  The  empiri- 
cal opens  all  around  towards  the  supernal.  Morality  finds 
fulfilment  in  religion.  Irreligion,  whether  in  thought  or 
life,  is  sign  of  arrested  moral  development,  not  of  a  com- 
plete moral  science  or  an  experience  of  life  rounded  fully 
out. 

5.    Religion,  consequently,  will  be  the  fulfilment  and  the 

and  must  be  something  yet  to  be  revealed,  because  not  yet  realized,  in  the 
idea  of  the  summian  bonum.  The  highest  good  is  thus  in  part  historical,  and 
in  part  super-liistorical.  Purely  empirical  ethics  does  not  do  justice,  and  on 
its  narrow  range  of  observed  facts  cannot  do  justice,  to  this  uudefinable  but 
powerful  element  in  the  moral  idealization  of  life. 

i  Eph.  iii.  19.  In  this  connection  the  words  of  Principal  Caird  are  worth 
quoting  :  "Moreover,  in  this  very  fact  that  thought  is  the  form  of  an  infinite 
content  is  involved  this  further  contrast  with  the  tendencies  of  the  lower 
nature,  that  whilst  the  latter  are  self-contained  and  self-sufficing,  thought  is 
the  silent  prophecy  of  an  ideal  which  makes  satisfaction  with  the  present  or 
the  actual  (or  rather  with  the  present  or  the  actual  into  which  no  deeper 
signification  has  been  infused)  forever  impossible.  Appetite  and  desire  have 
no  ideal.  .  .  .  But  that  which  makes  man  a  spiritual  being  makes  him  also 
a  restless  being.  Reason  is  the  secret  of  a  divine  discontent."  —  Philosophy  of 
RelKjion,  pp.  2G7-2G8. 


INTRODUCTION  23 

inspiration  of  ethics.     It  enlarges  the  conception  of  life, 
and  it  enhances  the  moral  motive  of  life. 

This  earth  seems  a  small  space,  and  this  life  but  a  mo- 
ment of  time  for  such  beings  as  we,  with  our  powers  of 
thinking  and  willing,  our  capacity  for  achievement,  and 
our  consciousness  of  love.  The  moral  view  of  life  is  cir- 
cumscribed and  broken  off  at  every  point,  if  this  world  be 
the  whole  sphere  of  our  possible  activity,  and  this  life  the 
end  of  all  our  quest  for  the  supreme  good.  Men  may 
walk  indeed  circumspectly  on  this  solid  earth,  although 
they  may  have  been  born  blind,  and  no  stars  shine  for 
them  from  afar.  And,  as  already  admitted,  we  might  find 
firm  footing  on  the  moral  permanence  of  things,  even 
though  we  had  no  spiritual  vision  or  hope  of  worlds  un- 
realized as  yet.  But  religion  opens  larger  prospects  to 
duty.  If  ethics  are  regarded  as  the  earthly  science  of  life, 
then  religion  is  the  moral  astronomy  of  it.  While  bent  on 
the  tasks  of  the  former,  we  need  the  outlook  and  the  uplift 
of  the  latter.  The  religious  consciousness  encircles  and 
completes  the  moral  consciousness  of  man  around  the 
whole  horizon  of  his  life,  bending  over  every  field  of  duty, 
as  the  heavens  encompass  and  comprehend  the  earth.  Not 
to  have  any  outlook  of  religious  thought  and  far  prospect 
of  a  boundless  hope  as  we  pursue  our  daily  tasks,  were 
like  living  on  an  earth  without  a  sky.  One  may  do  his 
daily  work  with  little  thought  indeed  of  the  overarching 
heaven  ;  but  the  sky  is  always  there,  —  the  far,  pure  back- 
ground for  all  man's  life  on  the  earth,  —  and  some  enlarging 
and  quieting  sense  of  it  will  pervade  our  daily  conscious- 
ness of  toil  and  labor  under  the  sun.  Duty  is  not  a  task 
given  man  to  be  laboriously  done  at  the  bottom  of  a  dark 
mine  ;  rather  it  is  a  life  to  be  healthfully  and  joyously  led 
under  the  broad  sky  in  the  clear  sunshine  of  God.  In 
obeying  duty,  because  it  is  dut}^  we  may  say  in  Schleier- 
macher's  spirit,  "  The  religious  feelings  are  to  be  as  a  holy 
music  which  shall  accompany  all  the  action  of  man ;  he 
should  do  all  with  religion,  not  from  religion."  ^     Though 

J  See  Jodl,  Geschichte  der  Ethik,  vol.  ii.  s.  186. 


24  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

the  immediate  motive  be  duty,  religion  may  be  its  bappy 
accompaniment  always. 

It  is  obvious,  moreover,  that  any  enlargement  of  one's 
view  of  life  will  prove  also  to  be  an  expansion  and  exhila- 
Tation  of  the  moral  motive  of  his  conduct.  Since  relig- 
ion lends  large  horizon  to  duty,  it  is  evident  that  it  must 
also  quicken  and  enhance  the  moral  vitality  of  human 
nature.  It  will  become  necessary  for  us  to  inquire  with 
some  particularity  in  a  subsequent  chapter  what  are  the 
moral  forces  in  the  life  of  humanity  and  its  development; 
and  whether  a  sufficient  moral  dynamics  can  be  found  in- 
dependently of  all  religious  power.  At  this  point,  how- 
ever, of  our  introduction  to  our  study  it  is  enough  to 
notice  that  the  pre-eminent  claim  of  religion,  and  of  the 
Christian  religion  above  all  others,  is  that  it  is  the  moral 
power  of  God  in  history.  Christianity  is  nothing  if  it  be 
not  the  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost  in  the  life  of  man.  It 
claims  to  be  the  sufficient  motive-power  to  energize  and 
renew  the  heart ;  and,  through  the  resistless  processes  of 
divine  grace,  to  bring  to  final  issue  in  some  perfect  good 
the  humanity  which  is  now  devitalized,  broken,  and  de- 
spoiled of  its  ideal  virtue  by  the  lawless  working  of  sin 
and  the  fearful  triumph  of  death. 

Religion  is  thus  related  to  ethics  as  hope  is  to  perform- 
ance ;  as  faith  in  the  future  and  its  promise  is  to  present 
failure  and  incompleteness.  Granting,  as  we  have  done, 
that  there  may  be  a  certain  independence  of  human  moral- 
ity from  all  religious  sanctions,  nevertheless  it  may  fairly 
be  asked  whether  if  severe  scientific  truth  should  compel 
us  to  blot  out  the  whole  religious  ideality  and  aspiration 
of  ethics,  humanity  would  then  long  care  to  preserve  even 
those  pure  moral  fragments  of  its  life  which  would  be  left ; 
whether  from  the  near  interest  and  the  immediate  pros- 
pect the  motive  for  noble  achievement  and  for  deathless 
love  could  be  drawn  with  anything  approaching  that  power 
and  unconquerableness  of  spirit  which  have  been  wit- 
nessed in  the  faith  of  the  martyrs,  the  zeal  of  reformers, 
and  the  joy  of  the  saints,  who  have  endured  as  seeing  Him 
who  is  invisible,  and  who  have  looked  for  a  better,  that  is, 


INTRODUCTION  25 

a  heavenly  country.  Certainly  thus  far  in  history  the  tri- 
umphal chapters  of  human  progress  have  been  written  in 
faith.  Without  some  moral  faith  which  rises  to  the  height 
and  breathes  the  spirit  of  religious  devotion,  we  have  little 
reason  to  expect  such  future  triumphal  arches  to  be  raised 
as  we  find  consecrated  to  faith  in  that  grand  eleventh 
chapter  of  the  epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  and  to  behold  the 
evils  and  the  sins  of  the  world  led  in  captivity  beneath 
them.  Natural  moral  science,  pure  and  simple,  untouched 
by  religion  and  un tinged  by  a  single  ray  of  hope  from 
beyond,  has  indeed  its  necessary  work  to  do,  its  sober 
economic  commission  to  fulfil.  As  it  is  called  to  weigh 
social  utilities,  to  judge  what  is  truly  beneficial  to  the 
social  whole,  what  hurts  or  invigorates  the  social  tissue,  it 
has  a  needed  and  valuable  work  to  accomplish;  it  is  its 
task  to  bring  to  practical  tests  and  verification  the  moral 
maxims,  the  jurisprudence,  the  public  sense  of  justice  and 
right  of  whole  communities  of  men.  Religion  will  accept 
with  gratefulness  this  aid  of  the  economists,  and  no  senti- 
ment of  charity  or  piety  should  be  suffered  to  interfere 
with  this  needed  service  of  the  most  severely  scientific 
ethics.  But  when  all  this  is  done,  and  well  done,  then  the 
enlargement  which  the  religious  view  of  life  only  can 
afford,  and  the  prospect  which  the  spiritual  mind  alone  can 
behold,  are  needed  for  a  complete  and  inspiring  ethical 
conception  of  life.  Only  from  out  the  eternal  can  the 
temporal  be  largely  and  truly  seen.  The  eye  must  be  on 
a  level  with  the  sky  to  take  in  the  whole  earth  and  its 
dependence  on  the  sun.  One  must  rise  above  this  world, 
must  pass  into  the  eternal  life  through  faith,  in  order  to 
judge  this  life  as  a  whole.  Only  in  the  power  and  the 
peace  of  religion  is  the  perfect  vision  to  be  gained.  Ethics 
is  finished  in  the  religious  comprehension  of  duty.^  The 
words  in  which  Aristotle  described  the  contemplative 
happiness  in  which  he  found  the  noblest  life  might  be 
quoted  as  a  protest  from  antiquity  against  all  modern 
attempts  to  divorce  ethics  and  religion  :     "  But  such  a  life 

1  "Ethics  must  either  perfect  themselves  in  religion,  or  disintegrate  them- 
selves into  Hedonism."  — Martineau,  Religion,  vol.  i.  p.  24. 


26  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

would  be  something  higher  than  the  merely  human;  for 
one  would  live  thus,  not  so  far  forth  as  he  is  man,  but  as 
there  is  in  him  something  divine."  ^ 

VI.    RELATION  OF  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  AND  ECONOMICS 

There  is  an  increasing  tendency  among  economists  to 
recognize  ethical  considerations  in  the  action  of  economic 
forces.  The  reactions  of  the  ethical  motives  on  economic 
conditions  are  too  frequent  and  too  influential  to  be  ignored 
in  any  induction  of  the  laws  of  material  welfare  which 
shall  be  true  to  real  life.  It  may  be  convenient,  however, 
and  scientifically  necessary,  in  the  determination  of  eco- 
nomic laws  to  keep  the  ethical  elements,  as  far  as  possible, 
separate  from  strictly  economic  factors.  And  on  the  side 
of  ethics  great  care  should  be  taken  not  to  miss  economic 
truth.  The  student  of  Christian  ethics  should  be  a  patient 
scholar  also  in  the  school  of  economic  science.  We  must 
understand  the  material  conditions  and  laws  of  human  wel- 
fare if  we  are  to  become  teachers  of  a  social  philoso]Dhy 
which  shall  not  prove  wanting  amid  the  pressures  of  men's 
increasing  needs.  All  sound  economic  science  will  yield 
its  truth  to  be  conserved  in  the  Christian  ideal  of  social 
well-being.  Christian  ethics  comes  to  the  laws  of  econom- 
ics, not  to  destroy,  but  to  fulfil.  The  importance  of  this 
recognition  of  the  service  to  be  sought  from  economics  by 
Christian  ethics  will  appear  more  fully  when  we  shall  treat 
of  Christian  social  ethics. 


VII.   PHILOSOPHICAL    POSTULATES    OF    CHRISTIAN 
ETHICS 

We  proceed  next  to  summarize  more  definitely  the  pos- 
tulates which  we  derive  from  philosophical  ethics.  These 
postulates,  which  are  the  proper  subjects  of  treatises  of 
moral  philosophy,  and  which  are  vindicated  in  the  discns- 
sion  of  Christian  theism,  enter  as  assumptions  from  Avhich 
we  start  in  the  study  of  Christian  ethics.     The  grounds, 

1  Nic.  Ethics,  x.  7. 10. 


INTRODUCTION  27 

however,  on  which  such  assumptions  rest,  may  be  briefly 
indicated  in  the  statement  and  definition  of  them ;  they 
will  be  subjected,  as  already  remarked,  to  further  ethical 
verification,  as  in  the  course  of  our  determination  of  the 
problems  of  practical  morals  we  shall  find  that  they  show 
themselves  fitted  to  the  necessities  of  men's  lives.  Ethics 
will  repeatedly  bring  all  its  assumptions  to  this  vital  test. 
There  can  be  no  severer  verification  of  truth  than  such 
moral  test  of  it  in  the  crucible  of  human  experience. 

I.  We  assume  that  human  nature  is  constituted  for 
moral  life. 

Human  nature  has  its  existence  in  an  ethical  sphere  and 
for  moral  ends  of  being.  We  assume  that  there  is  a  natu- 
ral capacity  or  basis  for  ethical  being  and  life  which  in  the 
ascent  of  nature  has  been  reached  at  length  and  is  occu- 
pied by  the  human  race.  Nature  we  regard  as  constituted 
for  the  attainment,  at  some  point  of  its  development,  of 
ethical  consciousness  and  volition ;  nature  from  the  begin- 
ning exists  to  be  ethicized  and  spiritualized.  Matter  exists 
ultimately  for  spirit,  and  spirit  for  the  Holy  Spirit.^  If  it 
be  objected  that  this  is  an  assumption  of  final  causes  in 
nature,  we  answer  that  it  is  assuming  no  more  teleology 
than  is  involved  in  any  fair  and  adequate  statement  of  the 
facts  which  are  already  realized  in  nature.  For  as  matter 
of  fact  nature  has  reached  the  willing  mind  and  the  self- 
conscious  will.  This  is  the  human  end  already  attained ; 
to  say  that  the  end  was  involved  in  nature  from  the  begin- 
ning is  only  to  say  that  nature  throughout  has  been  true ; 
that  the  beginning  does  not  belie  the  end  of  nature  in 
humanity.  Nature's  first  courses  were  laid  sufficiently 
broad  for  its  highest  attainments.  How  far  this  intention, 
or  truth  of  nature  to  itself   from   beginning  to  end,  has 

1  Rothe  ■v^■itll  profound  insight  urges  that  the  question  with  materialism  is 
not  whether  man  brings  a  pure  spirit  into  the  world  with  him  or  not ;  whether 
man,  so  soon  as  he  sees  the  light  of  the  world,  is  a  purely  sensuous  or  a  sensu- 
ous spiritual  being;  but  the  sole  question  is  whether  a  being  that  is  a  merely- 
sensuous  animal  from  the  beginning,  of  the  peculiar  constitution  of  man,  in 
the  process  of  the  development  of  his  animal  life  could  remain  a  merely  sen- 
suous (rei7isinnJiches)  being,  with  the  thoroughly  peculiar  psychical  functions 
which  this  process  sets  in  play?  "  We  deny  this,"  he  says,  "  with  absolute  con- 
fidence, and  this  denial  is  our  spiritualism."  —  Theolog.  Ethik.  vol.  i.  s.  459. 


28  CHKISTIAN   ETHICS 

been  a  conscious  intention ;  and  whether  that  conscious- 
ness of  the  end  from  the  beginning  resides  within  nature, 
or  in  one  Mind  which  thinks,  and  one  Will  that  holds 
nature  to  its  truth  and  aim,  —  this  is  another  question  ; 
this  is  a  further  inference  which  theism  may  draw  from 
the  observed  order  of  the  world;  at  present  we  are  simply 
assuming  as  a  fundamental  postulate  from  philosophical 
ethics  that  nature  was  constituted  for  moral  ends,  and  in 
man  has  become  capable  of  moral  life. 

No  theory  of  man's  physical  beginning  and  the  lowly 
origin  of  the  human  species  can  interfere  with  or  take  away 
the  grounds  of  this  assumption;  for  here  and  now,  how- 
ever it  was  brought  to  pass,  we  stand  on  a  moral  plane  of 
existence,  and  man  is  capable  of  a  life  which  shapes  itself 
according  to  ideal  ends  of  being.  Darwinism  only  offers 
'^  a  larger  teleology,"  —  another  tentative  theory  of  the 
age-long  way  through  which  the  creation  has  ascended  to 
the  moral  order;  but  it  does  not  contradict  its  actual 
rational  and  moral  attainment.  And  the  goal  that  has 
been  gained  in  our  present  powers  and  capacities,  is  not  to 
be  involved  in  any  mystery  which  may  still  be  left,  after 
all  our  science,  enveloping  the  way  in  which  we  have 
come  to  our  moral  manhood. 

II.  Christian  Ethics  assumes  the  sense  of  obligation,  or 
the  authority  of  conscience. 

The  psychological  inquiry  concerning  the  nature  and 
authority  of  conscience  is  itself  modern  as  distinguished 
from  classical  ethics.  Dr.  Martineau  has  said,  and  broadly 
speaking  the  statement  is  true,  that  psychological  ethics  is 
peculiar  to  Christendom.  In  Christianity  human  nature, 
rather  than  nature,  became  the  sole  object  of  interest  and 
investigation.  The  world  existed  for  man's  sake.  The 
heavens  were  made  to  minister  to  man.  The  human  soul 
v/as  the  one  great  object  of  the  divine  government.  Hence 
landscape  painting  formed  only  the  background  of  early 
and  mediaeval  Cliristian  art.  Naturally  under  this  con- 
ception of  the  supreme  importance  of  the  human  soul  Chris- 
tian philosophy  and  ethics  became  earnestly  subjective 
and  penetratingly  introspective  in  their  methods  and  aims. 


INTRODUCTION  29 

Modern  psycliology  may  almost  be  said  to  be  the  necessary 
consequence  of  the  ages  of  Christian  faith,  however  inde- 
pendent of  its  parentage  it  may  have  become. 

In  ancient  Greek  philosophy,  on  the  contrary,  man  ex- 
isted as  an  integral  part  of  nature,  and  Greek  ethics  was 
predominantly  the  study  of  man's  life  as  a  part  of  the  order 
of  nature  in  which  he  lived.  Morality  (as  Dr.  Martineau 
has  remarked  i)  was  to  be  determined  "  from  the  considera- 
tion of  man  as  a  natural  object  placed  and  constituted  in  a 
certain  Avay."  The  Greek  ethics  was  not  a  subjective  af- 
fair of  the  moral  sentiments;  a  man's  virtue  relates  to  the 
world  around  him,  and  is  to  be  determined  by  a  study  of 
the  conditions  of  liis  life,  especially  as  these  are  given  in  his 
state  or  city.  Notwithstanding  the  idealism  of  Plato,  and 
the  fundamental  Socratic  precept,  know  thyself,  the  Greek 
ethics  and  philosophy,  it  has  been  rightly  observed,  "  pre- 
serve a  predominantly  objective  tone."  But  the  Christian 
ethics,  which  superseded  the  classic,  was  characterized  by 
a  fondness  for  introspection.  Earnest  effort  was  made  to 
lay  bare  the  moral  secret  of  the  soul.  Within  the  circle  of 
Christian  thought  the  emphasis  has  been  laid  on  the  law 
which  is  written  in  the  heart,  and  on  the  inner  light.  The 
moral  intuition  has  been  followed,  and  conscience  obeyed 
as  the  voice  of  God  speaking  within  the  soul.  Con- 
science, as  Principal  Shairp  defined  it,  ''is  the  absolute  in 
man."  2 

Since  the  recent  predominance,  however,  of  scientific 
methods  and  pursuits,  this  psychological  habit  of  Christian 
ethics  has  been  modified,  and  moral  philosophy  has  been 
restored  to  the  list  of  the  natural  sciences.  Scientific 
ethics,  so-called,  is  a  return  to  the  ancient  Greek  vicAv  of 
man  as  belonging  to  nature,  while  it  applies  to  this  studv 
new  and  vastly  improved  methods  of  investigation.  The 
older  utilitarianism  which  first  began  to  dispute  with  intui- 
tionalism on  psychological  ground,  has  more  recentlv  en- 
trenched itself  in  evolutionary  theories  of  nature.  Rejecting 
any  present  or  immediate  utterances  of  the  soul  concerning 

1  TvpoH  of  FJhicnl  Tliporv.  vol.  i.  p.  fi.3. 

2  Principal  iShairp  and  his  Friends,  p.  94. 


30  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

itself  as  necessarily  final,  and  recognizing  no  ultimate 
source  of  knowledge  in  psychology  (for  that  may  be  itself 
derivative),  our  modern  scientific  ethics  has  sought  to 
trace  the  natural  history  of  conscience  from  its  nebulous 
i)eginnings  to  its  present  distinct  luminousness,  —  to  write 
a  natural  history  of  conscience  from  its  crude  prehistoric 
germs  up  to  its  fullest  and  fairest  growth  and  blossoming 
in  the  sensitive  honor  and  generous  devotion  of  the  noblest 
souls. 

The  legitimacy  of  this  endeavor,  and  its  tentative  suc- 
cess within  its  own  lines,  need  not  be  denied  in  the  in- 
terest of  intuitional  morals.  It  is  true  that  man  is  an 
object  of  nature,  and  as  such  has  a  natural  history.  His 
moral  and  spiritual  powers,  whatever  be  their  ultimate 
nature  or  further  secret  of  being,  have  their  antecedents 
and  their  environment  in  nature  and  the  processes  of  nature. 
The  Greek  ethics  did  not  occupy  a  false  position,  although 
it  did  not  gain  the  highest  point  of  view,  when  it  studied 
man  as  an  object  of  natural  history.  Nor  should  any  light 
which  physiology  or  other  natural  sciences  may  throw  into 
the  intricate  and  intimate  processes  of  conscience  be  re- 
garded with  suspicion,  as  though  the  more  we  may  know  of 
man's  relationship  to  nature,  the  less  sure  we  may  be  of  his 
spiritual  solitariness  and  supremacy.  On  the  contrary,  to 
discover  more  clearly  how  anything  has  grown,  may  enable 
us  to  estimate  more  truly  its  worth  and  to  distinguish  it  more 
confidently  from  all  other  things.  Without  entering  into 
a  minute  statement  of  the  various  ingenious  and  plausible 
attempts  which  have  been  made  to  write  the  natural  his- 
tory of  conscience,  it  is  sufficient  for  our  purpose  to  notice 
that  they  all  involve  this  common  postulate,  that  con- 
science is  a  compound  social  sentiment  or  judgment.  It  is 
the  growth  and  unification  of  many  earlier  and  simpler 
elements  and  conditions. 

80  Mr.  Stephen,  improving?  somewhat  on  Mr.  Spencer's  Data  of 
Ethics,  discovers  that  the  distinction  drawn  between  the  social  and  the 
self-reijarding  qualities  cannot  possibly  be  ultimate  ;  ^  and  he  defines 
morality  as   "a  statement  of  the  conditions  of  social  welfare."^    He 

1  The  Science  of  Ethics,  p.  9G.  2  jjjid.  p.  217. 


INTRODUCTION  31 

reaches  at  last  this  singularly  simple  definition  of  so  complex  a  phenome- 
non as  conscience :  "  The  moral  law  being,  in  brief,  conformity  to  the 
conditions  of  social  welfare,  conscience  is  the  name  of  the  intrinsic 
motives  to  such  conformity."  i  "The  conscience  is  the  utterance  of  the 
public  spirit  of  the  race,  ordering  us  to  obey  the  primary  conditions  of  its 
welfare."  - 

The  chief  factor  by  which  this  individual-social  con- 
science is  developed,  turns  out  to  be  the  old  and  familiar 
friend  of  the  utilitarians,  in  their  efforts  to  conceal  the 
apparent  difference  between  self-love  and  sacrifice,  —  the 
power,  namely,  of  sympathy.  Sympathy  is  the  tentacle  by 
means  of  which  the  individual  feels  his  relations  to  the 
social  tissue ;  and  conscience  is  his  fully  developed  sense 
of  well-being  in  the  social  organism.  Or,  as  Mr.  Stephen 
puts  it :  ^  "  The  sympathetic  being,  that  is,  becomes  in  virtue 
of  his  sympathies,  a  constituent  part  of  a  larger  organiza- 
tion "  ;  —  as  a  reflecting  body,  to  follow  his  further  illus- 
tration, derives  its  color  not  only  from  its  own  structure, 
but  also  from  surrounding  bodies.  Thus  conscience  in 
the  individual  is  to  be  regarded  as  the  reflection  of  the 
social  sense  of  good,  which  his  sympathetic  nature,  like  a 
sensitive  plate,  enables  him  to  receive.  The  individual 
conscience  is  reflection  of  the  social  sense  of  well-being.* 

This  attempted  social  derivation  of  conscience  contains 
an  important  truth  for  our  ethics.  Any  purely  individual- 
istic determination  of  conscience  is  in  danger  of  stopping 
with  a  half-truth,  and  perverting  by  its  incompleteness, 
the  practical  moral  standards  of  life.  There  is  no  little 
truth  in  the  terse  saying  of  Mr.  Green  :  "  No  individual 
can  make  a  conscience  for  himself.  He  always  needs  a 
society  to  make  it  for  him."  ^  Neither  morally  nor  spirit- 
ually, any  more  than  physically,  is  the  individual  an  atom, 
nor  can  the  obligation  of  the  individual  soul  be  measured 
in  any  atomistic  conception  of  it.  "■  Only  through  society," 
as  Mr.  Green  explains,  "  is  personality  actualized."  ^     We 

1  The  Science  of  Ethics,  p.  349.  2  /j^v?.  p.  351.  3  jj^id  p.  257. 

4  To  act  reasonably,  a  social  being  must  take  that  course  of  conduct  "  which 
gives  the  greatest  chance  of  happiness  to  that  organizatiou  of  which  he  forms 
a  constituent  part."    Ibid.  p.  258. 

5  Prolegomena,  p.  351.  6  ijyid  p.  200. 


32  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

shall  have  occasion  to  observe  further  on,  how  the  social 
conception  of  man's  being  and  duty  enters  into  the  idea  of 
the  highest  good. 

If  we  sum  np  the  contributions  which  we  may  receive 
from  these  various  endeavors  of  recent  writers  to  trace  the 
natural  history  of  conscience,  they  may  be  stated  as  fol- 
lows :  (1)  A  clearer  recognition  of  the  fact  that  man 
morally  and  spiritually  is  a  growth,  and  not  the  result 
simply  of  some  stroke  of  creative  power.  (2)  In  man's 
growth  all  his  being  has  been  involved,  and  each  part  and 
power  of  his  nature  has  been  developed  in  relation  to  all 
other  parts  and  powers  of  his  nature.  (3)  The  highest  and 
most  distinctively  human  issues  and  powers  of  this  devel- 
opment of  man  have  their  antecedents  and  conditions  in 
less  human  and  more  animal  capacities  and  processes. 
(4)  Man's  moral  consciousness  has  some  continuity  with 
all  man's  preceding  life  and  growth.  (5)  Man's  moral 
life  takes  up  and  transforms  previous  nou-moral  elements 
and  experiences.  (6)  The  moral  development  of  the  indi- 
vidual cannot  be  held  separate  from  the  moral  develop- 
ment of  the  race  ;  there  is  a  moral  solidarity  of  the  race ; 
the  individual  conscience  is  conditioned  by  the  social  con- 
science. (7)  With  more  or  less  distinctness  and  precision 
the  history  of  this  growth  into  moral  consciousness  from 
its  germinal  emergence  out  of  the  pre-existing  soil  of  the 
non-moral  may  be  conceived  and  traced ;  or  what  we  have 
called  a  natural  histor}^  of  the  rise  of  conscience  may  be 
written  with  sufficient  plausibility  to  give  it  value.  (8)  Any 
further  determination  of  the  nature  of  conscience  from 
psychological  analysis  must  now  be  conducted  under  the 
light  which  may  be  thrown  upon  the  formation  of  con- 
science from  this  natural  history  of  it. 

In  view  of  these  researclies  and  results  older  theories  of 
intuitionalism  undoubtedly  require  modification.  And  it 
is  possible  that  the  result  of  such  investigations  into  the 
naturfll  genesis  and  the  natural  laws  of  conscience  may 
prove  in  the  end,  not  that  conscience  is  any  the  less  dis- 
tinctive and  supreme,  but  that  nature  from  the  beginning 
may  have   been  more  pervaded  with  tendencies  towards 


INTrwODUCTION  33 

the  moral  than  we  had  supposed.  Increasing  knowledge 
of  the  natural  laws  and  growth  of  conscience  may  yield 
as  a  last  word  a  better  moral  teleology  of  nature.  For 
we  may  discover  how  from  the  beginning  the  creation  was 
constituted  for  the  evolution  of  moral  being,  and  ordained 
for  the  reign  of  moral  ideas. 

We  may  now  return  to  the  method  of  psychology  and 
inquire  what  are  the  deliverances  of  the  moral  con- 
sciousness, as  we  now  possess  it,  concerning  itself;  and 
further  what  validity  these  immediate  utterances  of  our 
moral  nature  maintain  in  comparison  with  the  natural 
history  of  the  growth  of  conscience  at  which  we  have  just 
glanced. 

It  is  as  important  to  bring  physiology  to  the  bar 
of  psychology  as  it  is  interesting  to  bring  psychology 
to  the  investigation  of  physiology.  The  one  method  of 
examination  is  as  necessary  and  as  valid  as  the  other. 
The  fruit  is  a  commentary  on  the  tree,  as  well  as  the 
tree  an  account  of  the  fruit.  If  on  the  one  hand  posi- 
tivists  would  subject  conscience  to  their  evolutionary 
theories  of  its  origin  and  growth,  it  is  equally  necessary 
on  the  other  hand  to  re-examine  such  theories  in  wdiat- 
ever  light  conscience,  when  it  is  finally  kindled  and  afire 
with  truth  and  God,  may  throw  back  down  the  age-long 
processes  of  its  preparation. 

The  testimony  of  moral  psychology  —  the  results  of 
analysis  of  man's  actual  moral  consciousness  —  may  be 
briefly  summarized  (so  far  as  is  necessary  for  our  intro- 
ductory purpose)  in  the  following  particuhirs. 

1.  We  find  existent  in  known  moral  experience  two 
factors,  the  one  of  which  is  the  moral  constant,  tlie  other 
a  moral  variable,  or  succession  of  variables. 

The  meaning  which  one  man  expresses,  and  the  next 
man  understands,  in  the  use  of  the  word  ought,  represents 
a  moral  constant  of  human  experience.  So  far  as  we  are 
able  to  follow  through  its  manifold  changes,  or  to  trace 
back  to  its  earliest  human  conditions,  the  ethical  experi- 
ence of  our  race,  we  find  this  moral  element  persistent 
and   continuous  in  it.     Whatever   we   may  imagine   pre- 


34  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

historic  conditions  of  man's  life  to  have  been,  or  whatever 
science  may  conjecture  were  the  animal  conditions  ante- 
cedent to  the  origin  of  man,  when  once  any  moral  con- 
sciousness has  been  gained,  this  element  of  obligation, 
this  moral  conviction  for  which  language  has  distinct 
and  separate  words  of  obligation,  appears  and  makes  its 
presence  felt  and  influential ;  and  this  characteristic 
human  sense  of  obligation  is  a  continuous  and  persistent 
force,  the  moral  constant  of  our  human  history. 

2.  Not  only  has  man's  history  been  the  rise  and  discrim- 
ination of  that  which  is  moral  from  all  non-moral  elements 
and  forces  of  nature,  but  also  these  non-moral  factors 
have  been  moulded  and  fashioned  in  man's  life  by  this 
distinctive  moral  energy  of  his  being.  In  other  words, 
the  natural  history  of  conscience  has  been  itself  deter- 
mined by  conscience.^ 

We  cannot  find  a  place,  a  time,  a  movement,  in  the 
evolution  of  conscience,  when  some  pre-existing  conscience 
or  moral  tendency  was  not  present,  guiding  the  evolution, 
and  determining  the  moral  type.  Man's  moral  being  has 
been  morally  created  or  evolved.  The  moral  at  the  end 
of  the  process  proves  the  tendency  towards,  and  capacity 
for,  the  moral  all  through  the  evolution,  and  at  any 
remotest  conceivable  beginnings  of  it.  Within  the  known 
limits  of  experience  the  moral  constant,  as  we  find  it  in 
our  individual  experience,  has  been  the  vitalizing  and 
expanding  energy  of  man's  moral  growth.  The  human 
conscience,  in  short,  is  itself  morally  formed  from  within, 
as  well  as  naturally  evoked  from  without.  Conscience 
is  in  a  sense  a  self-creation,  having  its  life  in  itself. 

A  previous  non-existence  of  any  moral  element  or  vital- 
ity in  nature  must  be  supposed,  if  conscience  is  to  be 
regarded  simply  as  a  composite  of  material  forces;  but 
such  primitive  non-existence  of  the  moral  constant  is  cer- 
tainly so  prehistoric  as  to  be  matter  only  of  scientific 
conjecture ;  and  if  we  hold  our  thought  to  the  strict  law 
of  causality  we  shall  find  no  place  for  it  as  a  conceivable 

1  Green  remai'ks  with  truth  that  "  the  history  which  thus  determines  moral 
action  has  been  a  history  of  moral  action."  —  Prolegomena,  p.  110. 


INTRODUCTION  35 

hypothesis.  For  since  the  moral  in  distinction  from  the 
non-moral  is  now  clearly  here,  it  must  always  have  been, 
potentially  or  actually,  somewhere  and  somehow. 

The  question  is  not  raised  just  now  whether  this  pre- 
existence  of  the  moral  energy  was  in  nature  or  without 
nature  —  an  immanence  of  the  moral  in  nature,  or  a  moral 
transcendence  of  nature;  or  whether  indeed  it  is  not  and 
has  not  always  been  both  immanent  and  transcendent. 
The  point  now  taken  is  that  the  natural  evolution  of 
morals,  so  far  as  we  have  any  positive  knowledge  of  it,  or 
indeed  are  able  rationally  to  construe  it,  has  itself  been 
morally  determined.  Analysis  of  our  existing  moral  con- 
sciousness and  investigation  into  the  past  moral  life  of 
man,  so  far  back  as  we  can  follow  it  with  any  certainty, 
discloses  these  two  factors  of  the  development  and  power 
of  conscience  :  a  succession  of  moral  variables  —  elements 
and  influences  more  or  less  moralized;  —  and  a  moral  con- 
stant assimilating  and  organizing  the  variable  conditions 
of  its  life.  We  observe  certain  non-moral,  or  partly  moral 
feelings,  acts,  influences  under  the  formative  power  of  the 
distinctively  moral  vitality  of  human  nature.  This  moral 
constant  may  indeed  reveal  itself  in  different  degrees  of 
illumination  and  power ;  —  it  may  be  as  dim  starlight  at 
one  hour  of  history,  and  bright  as  the  noonday  in  another 
age;  —  but  the  moral  in  man  is  the  inner  reflection  of 
"  the  Light  w^hich  lighteth  every  man,  coming  into  the 
world."  1 

The  question  concerning  the  origin  of  conscience  resem- 
bles the  inquiry  which  has  been  pursued  concerning  the 
origin  of  life  on  the  earth.  Even  though  spontaneous  gen- 
eration be  regarded  as  hypothetically  possible,  nature  under 
the  minutest  scrutiny  has  no  instance  of  it  to  show.  Life, 
so  far  as  we  have  any  positive  science  of  it,  always  presup- 
poses life.  Throughout  the  known  history  of  life  there  has 
been  a  vital  constant  unresolvable  into  anything  other  than 
itself,  revealing  itself  in  its  distinctive  oi-ganic  energy,  and 
putting  forth  ever  fresh  and  increasing  vitality,  in  the 
midst  of  the  variables  of  species,  and  without  break  of 

1  John  i.  9. 


36  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

living  continuity  among  the  ceaseless  transformations  of 
forces.  It  has  been  the  same  with  the  vitality  of  the  moral 
consciousness  of  man.  We  know  not  a  solitary  instance 
of  the  spontaneous  generation  of  conscience.  Other,  non- 
moral  materials  may  have  been  taken  up  into  the  organiza- 
tion and  enrichment  of  the  moral  life  of  man ;  but  the  rise 
and  growth  of  conscience  have  always  proceeded  in  the 
presence  of  some  pre-existing  moral  vitality ;  we  have  no 
positive  science  of  the  conversion  of  non-moral  into  moral 
being,  except  through  the  mediation  of  already  existing 
moral  power ;  spontaneous  generation,  in  short,  is  as  pure 
a  fiction  in  morals  as  it  is  in  biology.^ 

3.  This  moral  constant  may  become  itself  an  object  of 
choice.  It  is  the  good  in  which  the  rational  conscious- 
ness centres,  on  which  the  will  may  rest.  The  idea  of 
good,  or  perception  of  worth,  may  be  said  to  furnish  in  and 
from  itself  the  desire  which  is  satisfied  in  the  moral 
choice  of  it.  Psychologically  it  is  not  true  that  all  objects 
of  desire  are  pleasures,  —  that  pleasure  is  the  only  thing 
desired  or  chosen.  For  an  object  or  end  of  activity  may 
be  itself  desired,  and  the  pleasure  accompanying  the  choice 
may  be  a  sign  or  justification  of  the  choice  of  it  as  reason- 
able, but  not  necessarily  the  object  of  the  choice,  —  the 
thing  immediately  desired  and  willed.^ 

Outward  things  have  many  relations  to  our  life,  and  in 
any  of  these  relations  may  call  forth  the  energies  of  our 
wills.  An  object  may  become  an  object  of  will  in  any 
relation  in  which  it  becomes  an  object  of  perception.  And 
although  it  be  maintained  that  all  the  manifold  relations 
of  objects  to  our  being  are  accompanied  in  our  perception 
of  them  with  possible  or  actual  sense  of  pleasure  or  pain, 
it  does  not  follow  that  their  pleasurableness  or  painfulness 
is  the  only  aspect  of  them  which  may  call  forth  our 
activity  or  fix  our  desire  upon  them.  A  perception  of 
their  fitness  to  our  life,  or  their  harmony  with  our  ideas 

1  For  fuller  discussion  of  this  position,  see  Smyth,  Religious  Feeling, 
ch.  iii. 

2  Mr.  Green  has  rightly  insisted  on  this  distinction  between  objects  of 
desire,  and  the  pleasures  of  desire,  in  his  Prolegomena,  pp.  165,  178. 


INTRODUCTION  37 

of  our  ends  in  life,  or  their  value  as  means  for  the  accom- 
plishment of  previous  choices,  —  a  perception  of  any  one 
of  various  relations  in  which  they  may  exist  for  us,  —  may 
be  the  immediate  reason  why  they  are  desired,  and  the 
determining  motive  of  our  choice.  Or  they  may  be  chosen 
directly  and  solely  for  the  promise  of  some  specific  pleasure 
contained  in  them ;  but  these  different  reasons  for  choice, 
and  these  distinguishable  states  of  mind  in  the  act  of  will- 

o 

ing,  cannot  be  identified  or  regarded  as  essentially  the 
same.  In  other  words,  all  relations  of  objects  to  our  judg- 
ment and  our  choice  cannot  be  expressed  in  terms  merely 
of  pleasure  or  pain. 

Moral  satisfaction  as  itself  an  object  of  choice,  is  distinct 
from  any  other  pleasure  which  may  accompany  the  act  of 
choice,  or  be  regarded  as  a  possible  consequence  of  it. 
Moral  approbation  as  an  object  of  desire  is  an  object  suffi- 
cient unto  itself.  So  far  as  it  affords  pleasure  it  yields  a 
peculiar  and  distinctive  kind  of  pleasure,  not  to  be  con- 
fused or  confounded  with  any  other  pleasures.^  Hence  it 
follows  that  the  moral  constant  of  human  experience  in- 
volves a  perception  of  the  good  as  in  itself  an  end  to  be 
chosen,  and  as  such  of  absolute  worth.  From  the  sense 
of  obligation  there  is  kindled  in  the  intellect  the  clear  idea 
of  moral  worth. 

4.  The  moral  constant,  which  yields  the  idea  of  worth, 
affords  thereby  the  measure,  or  means  of  volitional  com- 
parison (preference),  between  motives  which  otherwise 
would  be  incommensurable.  Two  things  are  involved  in 
this  proposition :  first,  that  there  are  different  kinds  of 
motives  which  are  not  directly  comparable ;  and  secondly, 
that  through  the  moral  constant,  with  its  idea  of  worth, 
they  may  be  brought  to  some  common  measure  within  the 
unity  of  personal  consciousness.  Utilitarian  morals  re- 
duces the  moral  motive  itself  to  pleasure,  —  the  greatest 
sum    of   pleasures,    or   the   highest  kind   of   pleasure ;    it 

1  Mr.  Mill's  admission  of  a  difference  in  quality  between  pleasures  is  really 
a  fatal  admission  for  hedonism.  —  Utilitarianism,  j)}-).  lOsq.  For  by  what  stand- 
ard of  value  shall  the  qualities  of  pleasures  be  determined  ?  Hedonistic 
ethics  logically  requires  the  reduction  of  all  pleasures  to  quantitative  measure- 
ments. 


38  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

assumes  that  all  pleasures  can  be  summed  up  in  one  con- 
ception of  pleasure,  and  that  a  direct  measure  of  compari- 
son between  all  desirable  objects  exists  in  our  conscious- 
ness of  pleasure.  But  this  is  pure  assumption.  On  the 
contrary,  it  would  appear  upon  a  close  psychological  analy- 
sis not  only  that  moral  pleasure  is  distinct  in  kind,  and 
that  conscience  affords  a  unique  satisfaction ;  but  also  that 
there  are  several  classes  of  pleasures  which  arrange  them- 
selves, when  directly  brought  into  line  with  each  other,  as 
a  series  of  incommensurables,  having  no  common  divisor, 
and  admitting  of  no  further  reduction.  Intellectual 
pleasures,  for  instance,  are  not  a  multiple  of  any  physical 
satisfactions.  No  bodily  sensation  can  be  used  as  a  com- 
mon divisor  of  the  pleasures  of  the  imagination  or  of  intel- 
lectual acquisition.  We  cannot  contain  higher  pleasures 
in  multiplied  terms  of  the  lower,  or  compare  directly  the 
sweetness  of  a  taste  of  sugar  with  the  delight  experienced 
in  reading  a  poem.  The  one  may  become  the  sign  for  the 
other  —  words  signifying  bodily  sensations  have  been 
transfigured  into  metaphors  of  the  spirit ;  all  spiritual  life 
has  its  sensible  environment  and  analogies.  But  directly 
the  two  are  not  on  the  same  plane ;  the  lines  are  parallel 
and  near,  but  not  identical.  They  can  be  brought  into 
relation  and  com^Darison,  not  because  they  are  points  in 
the  same  line,  but  because  they  are  parallel  lines  within 
the  domain  of  the  same  thinking,  willing  consciousness  ot 
being.  The  unity  of  the  sensible  and  the  supersensible, 
of  the  physical  sensation  and  the  moral  pleasure,  does  not 
consist  in  any  common  matter  which  they  share ;  but  it  is 
given  in  the  oneness  of  the  personal  life  which  proceeds 
on  both  these  lines.  The  two  are  correlated  in  the  per- 
sonal unity  of  our  life.  Utilitarianism  in  making  all 
pleasures  directly  comparable  as  things  of  the  same  kind, 
assumes  a  spurious  commensurability  of  objects  which 
differ  in  our  consciousness  of  them. 

Equally  fallacious  is  it,  and  unsupported  by  close  psy- 
chological analj^sis,  to  imagine  a  greatest  sum  of  pleasures 
which  may  be  chosen  as  the  supreme  good.  For  pleas- 
ures of  different  kinds  can  no  more  be  added  together  in 


INTRODUCTION  39 

one  sum  than  the  angles  of  a  geometric  figure  and  the 
chemical  affinities  of  two  elements  can  be  added  in  one 
equation.  Sunlight  and  earthiness  may  indeed  be  organ- 
ically united  in  the  vegetation  which  shall  be  the  flower 
and  fruit  of  both ;  so  likewise  bodily  sensations  and  pleas- 
ures, and  mental  and  moral  light,  may  be  organically 
unified  in  the  rich  personal  being  and  life  of  man :  but  a 
sum  of  pleasures  mathematically  computed  in  an  equation 
of  the  greatest  possible  happiness  is  as  inconceivable  as  a 
sum  of  sunlight  and  dirt.  The  greatest  sum  of  pleasures, 
which  figures  in  utilitarian  ethics,  is  a  pure  fiction  of 
philosophic  speech.  Utilitarianism  is  a  fictitious  appli- 
cation of  mathematics  to  psychology.  It  w^ould  put  to- 
gether arithmetically  what  nature  relates  and  combines 
only  through  organic  and  vital  processes.  Plato  said 
truly  that  God  geometrizes ;  but  the  Hebrew  Scripture 
speaks  also  of  the  living  God.  Nature  is  mote  than 
geometry;  it  is  also  life.  And  the  processes  of  life  are 
spiritual  as  well  as  arithmetical.  As  matter  of  fact,  no 
human  soul  has  ever  succeeded  in  reducing  its  life  of 
desire  and  choice  to  the  series  of  equations  of  pleasures 
which  utilitarian  ethics  invents. 

If  it  be  true  even  of  the  different  kinds  of  sensible 
pleasures  that  they  cannot  be  added  up  in  any  common 
measure,  still  more  evident  is  it  that  moral  satisfactions 
are  incommensurable  in  kind  with  all  other  pleasures. 
The  delight  which  the  hero  finds  in  doing  his  duty  nobly, 
even  at  the  cost  of  life  itself,  is  not  comparable  with  any 
satisfaction  of  appetite.  The  peace  of  the  saints  in  the 
love  of  God  is  not  to  be  expressed  in  words  of  physical 
satiety  .1 

1  A  similar  effort  to  reduce  the  springs  of  human  action  to  some  system 
of  quantitative  measurement  was  made,  from  an  opposite  quarter,  by  Spi- 
noza: "  I  shall  discuss  human  actions  and  appetites  just  as  if  it  were  a  ques- 
tion of  lines,  planes,  or  solids."  —  Ethics,  Part  iii.  Int.  The  only  difficulty 
with  the  endeavor  is  that  human  conduct  is  not  a  matter  of  lines,  planes,  and 
solids;  and,  although  there  is  an  order  of  freedom,  of  which  some  philo- 
sophic account  may  be  rendered,  different  qualities  of  motives  cannot  be 
directly  measured  on  a  quantitative  scale.  Some  third  term  of  comparison 
must  be  found,  by  which  to  determine  the  variant  worths  of  motives  in  the 
scale  of  preferability.  Moral  statistics  may  afford  rough  averages  of  prob- 
abilities of  conduct,  but  occultations  of  virtue  cannot  be  calculated  like 
eclipses  of  astronomical  bodies ;  there  is  no  exact  science  of  freedom. 


40  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

If,  however,  all  these  several  kinds  of  pleasures,  includ- 
ing moral  delights,  are  not  directly  comparable,  how,  it 
will  be  asked,  are  we  to  understand  the  fact  that  many 
preferences  of  actual  life  bring  two  or  more  of  these  in- 
commensurables  into  comparison,  and  a  choice  is  made 
between  them  ?  The  martyr  chooses  moral  satisfactions 
in  preference  to  physical  comfort.  The  student  prefers 
the  pleasures  of  prolonged  study,  with  a  moderate  income, 
to  the  pursuit  of  wealth  and  luxury. 

So  far  as  a  choice  may  be  made  between  pleasures  of 
the  same  class  or  kind,  —  between  pleasures,  for  instance, 
which  may  have  a  common  measure  in  similar  bodily  sen- 
sations, or  between  pleasures  which  have  some  common 
mental  term,  —  the  problem  presents  less  difficulty.  But 
our  preferences  play  also  constantly  between  different 
kinds  as  well  as  degrees  of  pleasure ;  and  character  is 
expressed  in  the  predominant  choice  of  one  kind  of  pleas- 
ure over  a  different  kind.  What,  then,  is  the  missing 
relation?  What  the  third  term  through  wdiich  they  are 
brought  into  relation  and  comparison  ? 

The  answer  has  already  been  indicated.  It  needs  to  be 
amplified  only  that  it  may  not  be  overlooked.  The  com- 
mon term  of  relation  between  objects  of  desire  or  choice, 
which  are  in  themselves  incommensurable,  is  the  worth  of 
these  different  things  to  the  person  and  his  ends  of  being. 
They  enter  into  comparison  as  different  elements  of  one 
life,  and  in  their  relative  worth  as  means  to  the  ends  of 
that  life.  As  they  possess  or  manifest  in  experience  dis- 
tinctive worths  for  the  growth  and  completion  of  the  per- 
sonal soul  and  its  life,  these  things  which  are  as  different 
as  a  bodily  sensation  or  a  mental  activity,  as  a  state  of 
slumber  or  a  spirit  in  prayer,  may  be  compared  by  the 
reason ;  and  according  to  their  value  under  different  cir- 
cumstances for  the  ends  of  being  they  may  become  objects 
of  rational  preference  to  the  will.  In  short,  motives 
different  in  kind  are  morally  comparable.  The  moral  con- 
stant in  man's  consciousness  of  ethical  good  is  the  common 
measure  of  motives.  They  may  be  ranged  according  to 
their  degrees  of  preferability  on  a  scale  of  worths. 


INTRODUCTION  41 

This  idea  of  worth  may  indeed  itself  be  conceived  in 
different  ways ;  but  in  some  way  it  must  be  used  as  a 
common  measure,  or  relating  term,  for  pleasures  which 
otherwise  could  not  be  brought  into  any  preferential 
order;  it  cannot  be  itself  reduced  to,  and  identified  with, 
any  one  of  those  pleasures.  It  expresses  some  relation 
of  motives  to  ends.  Some  idea  of  relation  to  the  end  of 
being  forms  the  ethical  measuring-rod.  One  pleasure 
is  worth  more  to  me  than  another,  and  therefore  I  should 
choose  it.  Why  ?  Not  because  it  contains  more  pleasure, 
but  because  it  is  pleasure  of  a  greater  value  to  me.  Not 
because  its  degree  of  pleasure  is  greater,  but  because  its 
kind  of  pleasure  is  higher.  But  why  is  it  higher?  This 
I  can  only  ansAver  by  showing  some  common  measure, 
which  I  find  in  man's  consciousness  of  the  worths  of  things 
to  him,  by  which  different  kinds  of  pleasures  may  be  com- 
pared. In  other  words,  I  can  find  a  human  commensu- 
rability  of  motives  in  some  idea  of  worth,  which  idea  may 
be  described  in  various  phrases,  but  which  I  cannot  in  my 
consciousness  of  it  resolve  into  anything  other  or  simpler 
than  itself. 

Lotze  holds  that  the  idea  of  worth  implies  always  some  relation  ;  that 
it  is  a  relative  term  (Pract.  Phil.  s.  7).  It  is  true,  as  we  have  been 
arguing,  that  the  idea  of  worth  expresses  the  relation  of  an  object  to  an 
end  of  being  ;  an  object  has  worth  in  relation  to  that  end  ;  different 
objects  may  be  compared  by  means  of  their  relative  worths  to  the  end 
of  a  life :  the  moral  absolute  is  the  supreme  end,  or  idea  of  the  highest 
good.  It  by  no  means  follows,  however,  that  the  idea  of  worth  in  this 
moral  relation  of  objects  to  ends  can  be  identified  with  the  feeling  of 
pleasure.  It  is  true  that  I  cannot  dissociate  the  idea  of  the  worth  of  an 
object  to  me  from  my  feeling  of  pleasure  in  it ;  its  worth  to  me  affects  my 
feeling,  and  is  signified  by  my  sense  of  pleasure  ;  but  the  pleasurable 
feeling,  which  expresses  the  worth  of  an  object  to  my  life,  by  no  means 
exhausts,  it  is  not  identical  with,  my  recognition  of  the  worth  of  that 
object  to  me.  On  the  contrary,  the  object  as  worthy  is  cause  of  the 
pleasure  by  which  its  worth  is  felt  and  recognized.  The  quality  of  the 
object  (its  worth  to  me)  is  manifested  by  its  effect  in  pleasurable  feeling. 
Absolute  worth  would  be  the  cause  of  a  feeling  of  absolute  pleasure  in 
the  subject  affected  by  it.  To  regard  pleasure  as  identical  with  moral 
good  is  to  mistake  the  sign  for  the  thing  signified.  There  is  a  special 
kind  of  pleasure  (sense  of  moral  approbation,  feeling  of  moral  satis- 
faction), which  accompanies  and  signifies  the  attainment  of  moral  good  ; 
different  degrees  of  this  pleasure  may  mark  different  degrees  of  excel- 


42  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

lence  in  acts  or  objects  which  are  of  moral  worth  to  us.  The  full  attain- 
ment of  the  morally  good  would  be  blessedness.  So  Lotze  reasons  that 
while  the  worths  of  different  things  cannot  be  conceived  independently 
of  our  relation  to  them,  still  the  pleasure  we  find  in  them  is  at  the  same 
time  "a  recognition  of  the  objective  beauty,  excellence,  or  goodness  of 
that  which  occasions  our  pleasure."  In  other  words,  while  the  quality  of 
worthiness  or  unworthiness  in  anything  exists  for  our  feelings,  it  exists 
independently  of  our  feelings. 

5.  The  idea  of  worth,  (which  w^e  find  to  be  a  distinctive 
characteristic  of  rational  consciousness,  and  Avhich  is  the 
means  of  volitional  preference,  between  things  that  differ  in 
their  relations  to  the  ends  of  personal  life,)  serves  still  fur- 
ther to  characterize  and  to  define  what  we  have  called  the 
moral  constant  in  distinction  from  the  moral  variables  of 
human  history. 

The  idea  of  worth  is  a  simple  and  ultimate  idea  —  a 
moral  constant  of  experience  ;  but  the  judgment  of  the 
relative  worths  of  things  to  the  ends  of  life,  is  complex 
and  changeable  —  a  moral  variable  of  history.  Morality 
has  involved  not  only  a  changeable  perception  and  judg- 
ment of  what  may  be  the  values  of  different  objects  to 
man,  but  also  a  sense  of  obligation  to  determine  his  life  in 
accordance  with  their  worths.  We  ought  to  graduate 
our  preferences  on  a  scale  of  moral  worths.  Conscience, 
or  the  moral  constant  in  man,  is  thus  seen  to  admit  of 
variable  contents  under  its  permanent  obligation.  The 
materials  for  conscience  may  change,  may  become  enriched 
and  clarified,  while  the  obligation  of  conscience  remains 
unchangeable.  This  is  only  saying  that  conscience  is  a 
constant  of  a  life  which  is  capable  of  development,  of  a 
nature  which  admits  of  expansion. 

6.  The  endeavor  to  explain  away  the  moral  factor  of 
life  in  the  supposed  interest  of  scientific  unity,  fails  of  its 
philosophic  intention;  for  it  loses  the  unifying  idea  of 
moral  worth  and  breaks  up  human  life  into  a  series  of 
incommensurables.  In  the  effort  to  escape  the  apparent 
dualism  between  body  and  mind,  the  flesh  and  the  spirit, 
any  non-moral  account  of  the  rise  of  man's  moral  being 
falls  back  into  an  atomistic  conception  of  human  nature, 
and  renders  the  life  of  man  and  tlie  course  of  history  but 


INTKODUCTION  43 

a  heap  of  accidental  and  unrelated  properties  and  events. 
We  might  not  inaptly  apply  the  adjective  polytheistic  to 
the  psychology  of  hedonistic  ethics ;  for  its  problem  is 
how  to  reduce  to  any  intelligible  mental  and  moral  unity 
its  world  of  many  gods,  its  innumerable  pleasures  and 
desires,  and  manifold  fortuitous  associations  of  widely 
differing  objects  of  human  regard.  Much  modern  phi- 
losophy, in  its  eagerness  to  escape  dualism,  misses  the  real 
unity  of  the  spirit  and  its  life,  and  falls  unawares  into 
polygenesis  in  its  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  soul,  and  into 
polytheistic  ethics  in  its  association,  without  any  supreme 
principle  of  moral  worth,  of  many  pleasures  and  indis- 
criminate sums  of  things  to  be  desired.  The  effort  to 
escape  this  moral  polytheism  by  reference  to  some  order  of 
nature,  or  general  solidarity  of  human  interest,  resembles 
the  escape  of  religion  from  the  worship  of  many  gods  to  the 
dominion  of  one  fate ;  there  ensues  a  dissolution  of  all  per- 
sonal motives  into  some  vast  impersonality  of  good. 

The  clear  recognition,  on  the  other  hand,  of  the  moral 
constant  as  an  integral  and  eternal  element  of  personality, 
escapes  this  reversion  to  atomism  in  philosophy,  and  remains 
true  to  the  human  consciousness  of  the  moral  value  of  our 
being  and  its  ideal  ends. 

Whether  more  may  not  be  learned  from  conscience  con- 
cerning its  origin  and  the  signs  which  it  brings  with  it  of 
man's  destiny,  will  appear  further  as  in  the  course  of  our 
discussions  we  shall  have  occasion  to  hold  the  natural 
conscience  up  to  the  light  of  the  most  developed  ethical 
consciousness  of  Christianity.  But  the  assumption,  which 
we  have  been  justifying,  of  the  existence  and  authority 
of  the  moral  in  man,  is  one  of  the  postulates  of  Christian 
ethics. 


VIII.    THEOLOGICAL  POSTULATES  OF  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

The  ethical  beliefs  and  standards  of  Christian  men,  as 
has  already  been  observed,  are  intimately  associated  with 
their  conceptions  of  Christian  doctrine.  The  doctrines^ 
however,  which  we  need  to  bring  as  postulates  to  Chris- 


44  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

tian  ethics  are  simple,  few,  and  comprehensive.  Having 
already  indicated  the  general  relation  of  ethics  and  theol- 
ogy, we  need  do  little  but  summarize  at  this  point  certain 
theological  postulates  which  will  appear  in  the  subsequent 
course  of  our  inquiries. 

I.  We  assume  from  apologetic  theology  the  positions  of 
Christian  theism. 

II.  We  assume  the  process  of  a  divine  self-revelation  in 
man,  through  nature,  and  in  the  course  of  history,  culmi- 
nating in  Christ.  This  postulate  Avill  be  more  specifically 
defined  subsequently. 

III.  We  assume  an  ethical  idea  of  God. 

This  postulate  is  of  such  consequence  that  it  should  not 
be  passed  over  without  some  further  preliminar}^  reflec- 
tion. Dorner  regards  the  ethical  idea  of  God  as  the  start- 
ing-point of  Christian  ethics.^  One  result  of  the  study 
of  theology  from  the  moral  side  will  be  the  gain  of  a  more 
advanced  and  adequate  ethical  conception  of  God.  We 
need  not,  however,  assume  at  the  outset  the  complete  ethi- 
cal conception  of  God  which  we  may  hope  to  win  through 
the  study  of  Christian  ethics  ;  but  we  must  begin  with  an 
idea  of  God's  nature  sufficiently  ethical  to  enable  us  to  go 
on  our  way  unhindered  by  our  theology.  And  we  must 
refuse  at  any  point  to  carry  over  from  dogmatics  a  con- 
ception of  God  or  his  government  which  is  unmoral,  or 
which  might  debar  us  from  further  progress  in  our  ethical 
pursuit  of  Christian  truth. 

We  assume  in  general  at  the  outset  of  any  Christian 
ethics  that  the  divine  nature  is  moral,  and  that  the  moral 
is  in  essence  the  same  in  God  and  man.  We  exclude  as 
unmoral  any  conception  of  God  which  exalts  his  will 
above  his  goodness,  which  finds  the  ultimate  ground  of 
right  in  might,  and  renders  moral  distinctions  dependent 
on  an  omnipotent  arbitrariness.  We  should  find  no  justi- 
fication for  writing  another  page  of  ethics,  if  we  started 
with  the  assertion  of  Duns  Scotus  that  right  and  wrong  are 
created  by  the  free  will  of  God.  Ethics  on  that  supposition 
might  be  a  science  of  what  is  right  now,  but  it  could  not 

1  System  der  Christ.  Eth.  s.  48. 


INTRODUCTION  45 

be  a  search  for  eternal  righteousness.  We  assume  that 
love  is  lord  in  the  divine  will,  not  that  the  will  of  God  is 
sovereign  over  his  love.  God's  omnipotence,  as  Dorner 
would  say,  exists  for  his  love.  The  moral  constant  which 
we  have  discovered  in  human  nature,  we  believe  to  be  also 
a  moral  constant  of  the  universe  because  it  is  the  essential 
nature  of  God.  If  it  were  not  independent  of  all  will,  it 
would  not  be  independent  of  our  will.  If  it  were  not 
God's  eternal  nature,  it  could  not  be  our  absolute  human 
obligation.  Moreover,  it  should  here  be  observed  that  we 
shall  not  trouble  our  Christian  morals  with  any  dogmatic 
ideas  of  the  divine  government  or  decrees  which  are  not 
ethically  conceived  and  ethically  luminous.  Any  dogma 
Avhich  theology  sends  to  ethics  must  present  preliminary 
credentials  of  its  good  moral  standing  in  order  to  be 
received  and  welcomed.  The  sole  sovereignty  to  be 
allowed  in  this  field  is  moral  sovereignty. 

IX.     SPECIAL   REQUIREMENTS   FOR   THE   STUDY  OF 
CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

These  introductory  remarks  will  serve  also  to  suggest 
some  of  the  difficulties  to  be  met  in  an  endeavor  to  com- 
prehend the  moral  consciousness  and  life  of  Christianity. 
In  one  sense  this  can  never  be  adequately  accomplished  in 
any  system  of  Christian  ethics.  New  books  are  periodi- 
cally needed  in  this  department,  because  the  Christian 
consciousness  is  always  a  growth  in  grace  and  knowledge. 
The  last  book  on  Christian  ethics  will  not  be  written  before 
the  judgment  day.  For  the  ethical  life  and  moral  judg- 
ments of  each  generation  will  continue  to  furnish  material 
and  light,  but  not  rest  or  pause,  to  the  Christian  spirit  of 
the  succeeding  age.  Tlie  facts  of  human  life  change ; 
social  conditions  become  more  complex ;  and  problem 
succeeds  problem  in  the  ethical  perfecting  of  the  race. 
Christian  ethics  therefore  should  be  a  growing  knowl- 
edge and  prophetic  understanding  of  the  increasing  life 
of  Christ  in  the  world.  Even  more  than  dogmatics  is  ethics 
called  to  be  a  progressive  science  of  the  Christian  life  until 


46  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

the  end.  The  moral  constant  of  history  —  conscience  and 
its  great  conviction  of  authority  —  is  itself  capable  of 
intensification  and  illumination  in  the  experience  of  men ; 
the  light  in  man,  being  always  the  same  celestial  Light, 
may  yet  shine  clearer  unto  the  perfect  day  —  the  "  beam  in 
darkness  "  may  grow ;  and  with  the  increasing  years  the 
moral  variables  also  multiply  and  combine  in  ever  new  and 
more  heterogeneous  transformations.  Until  the  Ideal  be- 
comes real,  until  the  kingdom  of  heaven  fully  comes,  Chris- 
tian ethics  wdll  be  called  time  and  again  to  take  up  anew 
-its  high  prophetic  task  of  the  moral  understanding  and 
interpretation  of  life. 

This  power  to  bring  life  to  true  moral  interpretation 
is  something  more  than  a  scientific  attainment.  Moral 
insight  was  always  a  prophetic  gift.  Nor  can  any  one 
age,  nor  any  single  mind,  however  gifted  or  inspired,  hope 
to  discern,  or  to  bring  to  full  expression,  the  whole  moral 
significance  of  human  histor}^  All  moral  as  Avell  as 
religious  prophesyings  are  in  part.  So  long  as  the 
supreme  good  remains  realized  only  in  part,  it  cannot  be 
known  in  full.  Each  age  opens  a  larger  prospect,  and 
each  prophetic  spirit  in  the  chosen  succession  of  God's 
interpreters  stands  on  higher  vantage  ground.  Isaiah  in 
his  visions  beholds  a  land  of  promise  fairer  and  more  ideal 
than  Moses  saw  from  Pisgah's  height ;  the  Baptist  prepares 
the  way  for  a  diviner  coming  of  the  Messiah  than  Isaiah 
and  the  prophets  had  dreamed ;  and  the  least  in  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  is  greater  than  he.  "  For  the  testimony 
of  Jesus  is  the  spirit  of  prophecy "  ;  ^  and  in  that  testi- 
mony all  the  Christian  ages  are  to  have  their  part  and 
word.  The  true  teachers  of  Christian  ethics  are  the 
noblest  and  happiest  lives  from  every  generation.  All 
the  saints  in  their  apprehension  of  the  love  of  God  which 
passeth  knowledge,  are  its  witnesses  and  prophets.  Its 
Spirit  has  the  gift  of  many  tongues.  The  languages  of  all 
peoples  who  shall  learn  to  walk  in  the  light  of  its  truth, 
shall  contribute  to  its  final  richness  and  fulness.  And 
any  humblest  Christian  character  may  bring  some  power 
or  grace   of  it  to  new  and  fairer  revelation.     We  are  to 

1  Rev.  xix.  10. 


INTRODUCTION  47 

find  the  wealth  of  the  materials  for  our  study  in  the  whole 
inheritance  of  the  lives  of  the  disciples  from  the  days  of 
the  apostles  of  old  to  the  last  endeavor  of  Christian  man 
or  woman  to  follow  Christ  and  to  make  the  world  more 
Christian. 

This  prophetic  character  and  these  interpretative  re- 
quirements of  our  science  of  the  Christian  life,  indicate 
also  certain  conditions  and  qualifications  which  are  neces- 
sary for  the  pursuit  of  this  study.  Every  science  requires 
of  its  students  special  gifts  and  training,  besides  the 
general  endowment  of  intellect  which  is  needed  for  the 
mastery  of  nature  by  mind.  Similarly  the  study  of 
Christian  ethics  makes  its  special  demands  upon  its  stu- 
dents. It  may  justly  ask  for  some  personal  sensitiveness 
to  ethical  conditions,  and  quickness  to  respond  to  moral 
truths.  To  understand  Christian  ethics  one  should  be 
able  to  put  himself  into  some  mental  sympathy  with 
Christian  ideas  and  harmony  with  the  Christian  con- 
duct of  life.  For  an  adequate  knowledge  of  Chris- 
tian ethics  there  is  needed  a  moral  nature  that  shall  lie 
largely  open  and  be  quickly  responsive  to  the  influence 
of  Jesus  and  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Christian  ideals. 
Ethical  truth  in  general  is  truth  addressed  not  to  the 
intellect  alone,  but  to  the  whole  personality.  While 
Christian  truth  may  be  required  to  justify  itself  to  the 
reason,  and  no  real  faith  can  be  irrational,  it  should  not  be 
forgotten  that  its  ethical  teachings  appeal  to  the  whole 
life  and  the  undivided  and  integral  personality.  Chris- 
tianity teaches  that  every  man  is  a  son  of  the  Father  in 
heaven,  and  that  through  his  sonship,  and  by  a  life  worthy 
of  that  original  human  sonship  from  God,  he  is  to  know 
the  Father.  Something  then  of  this  human  sense  of  son- 
ship,  something  of  this  luill  to  know  the  Father  by  doing 
the  will  of  God,  is  necessary  for  our  understanding  of 
truth  and  particularly  of  the  highest  ethical  truth.  God's 
truth  speaks  indeed  to  the  reason,  but  while  speaking  it 
faces  our  whole  manhood;  the  Christian  revelation  is 
revelation  of  duty  and  of  God  to  our  life  in  its  length  and 
breadth,  and  for  our  whole  consciousness  of  personal  being 
and  worth. 


PAET  riEST.    TEE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL 

CHAPTER  I 

THE    REVELATION   OF   THE    CHRISTIAN    IDEAL 

The  moralist  is  the  man  with  an  ideal.  He  cannot 
appear  among  men  as  a  moral  teacher  unless  he  brings 
some  idea  of  good  which  he  would  stamp  on  human  life. 
The  moral  lawgiver  is  always  the  man  who  has  had  some 
pattern  shown  him  on  the  holy  mount.  The  moral  enters 
and  lingers  in  our  consciousness  in  some  vision  of  the  ideal. 
We  perceive  some  better  thing  to  be  thought  or  done ; 
and  while,  like  Peter,  we  are  thinking  on  the  vision,  the 
task  in  which  the  vision  may  find  fulfilment  and  interpre- 
tation, will  come  and  await  us  at  the  door.^ 

Descriptive  ethics  may  be  a  narration  simply  of  those 
customs  and  traits  which  have  already  gained  moral  exist- 
ence on  the  earth ;  but  normative  ethics  will  bring  to  life 
at  every  point  some  idea  of  what  shall  be.  This  ideality 
of  ethics  is  to  be  recognized  whatever  may  be  our  theories 
of  the  nature  of  the  morally  good.  For  however  it  may 
be  conceived,  it  is  a  good  to  be  made  real,  an  ideal  to  be 
realized  in  human  life  and  society.  The  first  and  last 
business,  therefore,  of  ethics  is  with  its  ideals.  The  ideal 
is  man's  moral  capital ;  and  it  is  to  be  put  at  interest  in 
life.  The  ideal  is  alike  the  starting-point  and  the  goal  of 
ethics.  In  any  moral  system  worthy  of  the  name,  some 
thought  of  good  to  be  attained  is  started  up,  and  is  to  be 
pursued  until  it  is  hunted  down.  Though  the  study  of 
ethics  is  to  be  conducted  as  an  inductive  inquiry,  and  the 
contents  of  the  moral  ideal  are  to  be  scientifically  deter- 
mined, nevertheless  morality  presupposes  some  idea  of  the 

1  Acts  X.  17. 

49 


50  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

good,  and  the  whole  course  of  ethical  induction  will  be 
directed  towards  the  determination  and  definition  of  the 
good  which  is  to  be  willed  by  men  and  realized  in  society. 
Without  initial  bankruptcy  of  ethics  and  poverty  of  spirit 
in  the  end,  moralists  cannot  sign  over  to  metaphysics  the 
first  question  of  human  concern,  What  is  the  supreme  good, 
the  summum  honum  ?  What  is  the  best  for  which  a  man  is 
born  and  should  live?  What  is  the  largest  and  richest 
good  which  all  his  days  here  a  man  should  seek  to  gain? 
What,  in  short,  is  your  ideal  of  life  ?  What  pattern  do  you 
bring  from  your  mount  of  vision  according  to  which  human 
life  with  its  many  threads  should  be  woven  ?  ^ 

Life  without  an  ideal  is  unmoral.  It  has  no  ethical 
worth,  as  brute  existence  has  no  moral  value  in  itself. 
Days  without  ideals  —  visionless  days  —  are  dull  days. 
Men  are  mere  plodders  on  the  earth  who  seek  no  moral 
ends  beyond  the  present.  Some  conception  of  supreme 
good  —  comprehensive  of  life  as  a  celestial  horizon  —  per- 
manent and  pure  as  the  heavens  above  the  earth  —  befit- 
ting the  soul  as  its  atmosphere  of  light  —  sufiicient  as  an 
eternal  prospect  for  its  life,  —  is  the  moral  necessity  of 
man's  being.  He  may  exist,  he  does  not  live,  who  has  no 
moral  ideal. 

We  are  distinguished  from  the  animal  creation  beneath 
us,  with  which  in  so  many  relations  we  are  closely  bound, 
by  this  moral  power  of  forming  ideals.  Take  from  us  our 
human  ideals  and  you  rob  us  of  the  sign  and  assurance 
of  our  being's  worth  and  immortality.  All  lower  nature 
exists  but  as  the  servant  of  the  Omnipotent,  because  it  has 
as  yet  no  conscious  participation  in  the  ends  of  God  in  the 
creation  ;  but  the  children  of  God  are  no  longer  servants  ; 
they  are  called  friends,  because  the  Son  knoweth  what  the 
Father  doeth.  The  Son  of  man,  who  was  the  Son  of  God, 
knew  the   Father,  and  was  known  of  him  ;    he   was  the 

1  So  Aristotle  began  his  ethics  by  accepting  the  definition  of  the  good  as 
"that  which  all  things  aim  at";  and  he  remarked  with  practical  wisdom, 
"  Has  not,  then,  the  knowledge  of  this  end  a  great  influence  on  the  conduct  of 
life?  And  like  archers,  shall  we  not  be  more  likely  to  attain  that  which  is 
right,  if  we  have  a  mark?  "  —  iVic.  Ethics,  \.  2.  2. 


REVELATION   OF    THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  51 

Christ  who  saw  and  followed  the  divine  idea,  the  eternal 
ideal  of  man. 

This  ideality  of  morality,  therefore,  however  historical 
or  inductive  may  be  our  methods  of  determining  its  con- 
tents, we  would  put  in  the  first  place  and  keep  dominant 
throughout  the  entire  course  of  Christian  ethics.  Hence 
the  first  part  of  this  treatise  will  be  concerned  with  the 
Christian  Ideal.  What  is  the  best  object,  according  to 
Christianity,  for  which  a  man  can  live?  What  is  the 
Christian  conception  of  the  highest  good? 

In  order  that  we  may  find  the  right  answer  to  this  pri- 
mary inquiry  of  Christian  ethics,  we  shall  need  first  to 
observe  carefully  the  manner  in  which  the  Christian  Ideal  is 
given,  —  the  historical  processes  through  which  it  has  been 
revealed ;  and  then,  secondly,  its  contents,  so  far  as  they 
are  known,  may  be  determined.  We  shall  consider,  there- 
fore, the  nature  of  the  revelation  of  the  Christian  Ideal ; 
we  shall  then  proceed  to  more  explicit  description  of  its 
contents.  And  beyond  that  will  lie  still  further  inquiries 
concerning  the  methods  of  the  increasing  realization  of 
the  Christian  Ideal  on  earth. 

We  begin,  accordingly,  with  the  determinative  fact  that 
the  Christian  Ideal  has  been  given  historically.  It  has  not 
been  won  by  a  mere  process  of  abstraction,  or  through 
some  philosophic  distillation  of  real  life  into  moral  senti- 
ments. The  Ideal  has  not  been  ideally,  but  historically, 
communicated  and  taught.  The  Christian  conception  of 
life  was  no  new  s]Deculation  of  the  philosophers,  no  dream 
of  the  wise  man,  no  prophetic  imagination  even  of  the 
glory  of  the  Highest.  The  Christian  Ideal  was  given  to 
men  in  an  historical  embodiment  of  its  glory.^  The  Chris- 
tian Ideal  in  its  first  revelation  to  men  was  not  that  which 
they  had  thought,  or  imagined,  or  reasoned,  it  was  that 
which  they  had  seen  and  heard :  "  That  which  we  have 
seen  and  heard  declare  we  unto  you  also,"  say  the  eye- 
witnesses   of    the   Christ.^     Hence    the    Christian    Ideal, 

1  "  At  the  summit  of  the  Christian  development  of  thought  stands  no  the- 
ory, but  a  personality  creative  in  the  moral  realm." — Jodl,  Geschichte  d. 
Ethik,  Bd.  i.  s.  50.  2  i  John  i.  3. 


52  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

while  capable  of  expansion  in  the  light  of  the  Spirit, 
is  in  its  core  historical.  We  start  in  Christian  ethics 
not  to  walk  on  the  clouds ;  we  find  firm  footing  in 
the  historical  realization  of  the  divine  idea  of  man  in  the 
person  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 

This  historical  form  of  the  revelation  of  the  Christian 
Ideal  involves  these  particulars,  which  we  proceed  to  dis- 
criminate : 

I.  The  Ideal  is  given  to  men  in  the  Person  of  Christ, 
who  Avas  the  real  example  of  it,  and  the  influence  of  whose 
Spirit  is  a  creative  power  of  it  in  the  lives  of  other  men. 

II.  This  Ideal,  which  Avas  given  in  a  personal  realization 
of  it,  is  presented  or  mediated  to  us  through  the  Christian 
life  and  testimony  which  the  Master's  coming  and  the 
Divine  Spirit  have  called  forth  and  inspired,  and  which 
witness  to  it  and  declare  it. 

III.  This  Ideal  has  also  been  partially  realized,  and 
applied  to  life  in  many  directions,  during  the  course  of  the 
Christian  history  which  has  proceeded  from  its  influence. 
And  it  is  still  further  to  be  realized  and  interpreted  in  the 
progress  of  Christian  life  and  thought. 

As  the  chief  of  the  apostles,  though  he  had  known 
Christ  after  the  flesh,  could  say,  "  Yet  now  we  know 
him  so  no  more " ;  ^  so  Christianity,  which  has  known 
the  moral  ideal  in  the  historical  Christ,  knows  it  also 
henceforth,  and  with  increasing  manifestation  of  its  grace 
and  truth,  after  the  Spirit.  It  is  to  be  spiritually  dis- 
cerned and  followed.  The  present  and  continual  law  of 
the  apprehension  of  the  Christian  Ideal  is  through  moral 
oneness  with  the  spirit  of  it:  "  But  if  any  man  hath  not 
the  Spirit  of  Christ,  he  is  none  of  his."  ^ 

I.    THE  IDEAL   AS  GIVEN  IN   THE   HISTORIC   CHRIST 

For  our  ethical  purpose  we  need  not  become  embarrassed 
in  the  critical  questions  which  may  be  raised  concerning 
the  New  Testament  writings.  For  the  immediate  percep- 
tion of  the  moral  ideal,  which  shines  in  Christ,  it  is  not 

1  2  Cor.  V.  16.  2  Rom.  viii.  9. 


KEVELATION   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN    IDEAL  53 

indispensable  for  us  to  know  whether  interpolations,  or 
some  unhistorical  traditions,  may  not  have  passed  into, 
and  become  blended  with,  the  apostolical  testimony  to  the 
Christ  which  the  Church  has  received.  What  concerns  us 
ethically  is  the  character  which  shines  directly  from  the 
gospels.  We  discover  a  clear  and  radiant  reflection  of  a 
wonderful  moral  personality  in  the  gospels.  ^ 

The  believer  may  argue  that  the  reflection  of  the  Christ 
in  the  New  Testament  requires  faith  in  the  historic  Jesus 
as  its  cause ;  that  the  idea  of  a  Person  so  transcendent 
could  only  have  proceeded  from  actual  vision  of  its  divine 
Original ;  —  as  the  image  of  the  sun  in  a  pure  lake  is  proof 
of  the  presence  of  the  sun  in  the  sky.  Moreover,  from  our 
ethical  apprehension  of  Jesus  we  may  proceed  to  deduce 
certain  conclusions  concerning  his  person,  or  metaphysical 
being,  which  we  must  suppose  as  the  natural  basis  or 
ground  of  a  character  so  ethically  unique  and  perfect. 
This  Son  of  man,  Ave  may  conclude,  must  have  been,  as  no 
other,  the  Son  of  God;  —  but  although  our  present  line  of 
moral  inquiry  will  run  very  close  to  these  more  theological 
interpretations  of  the  life  of  the  Christ,  we  need  not  con- 
fuse the  two,  and  we  may  pursue  our  ethical  course  Avithout 
being  compelled  to  tarry  with  many  critical  questions,  or 
to  define  theologically  at  every  point  our  moral  appre- 
hension of  the  ideal  whicli  has  been  given  to  us,  clothed 
in  flesh,  and  full  of  grace  and  truth,  in  Jesus  Christ. 

We  start  from  the  fact  that  the  Christian  Ideal  has  its 
source  and  its  realized  example  in  the  Jesus  of  the  gospel 
history. 

This  statement,  however,  involves  two  truths  which 
need  more  closely  to  be  considered:  we  recognize  in 
Jesus  both  an  original,  and  an  originative,  moral  power. 

1  The  remark  of  Strauss  that  "  the  Jesus  of  history,  of  science,  is  simply  a 
problem,  but  a  problem  cannot  be  an  object  of  faith,  an  example  of  life  "  {I)er 
alte  unci  der  neue  Glaube,  s.  79),  is  not  ethically  true,  is  not  true  to  the 
historical  ethical  idea  of  Jesus,  and  his  influence  in  Christian  experience. 
Whatever  historical  difficulties,  or  critical  questions,  may  exist,  the  ethical 
example  of  Jesus  as  an  object  of  faith  was  clearly  and  positively  given  in  the 
apostolic  witness  to  him,  and  it  is  a  known  and  distinct  Light  in  the  Christian 
consciousness,  to  which  the  world  is  ever  returning. 


54  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

The  moral  ideal  which  we  discover  in  Jesus  was  original 
in  him,  and  it  has  been  creative  of  a  new  morality  in  his 
name.  Light,  itself  from  God,  and  not  derived  from  man, 
dwelt  in  him :  "  There  was  the  true  (original)  light,  even 
the  light  which  lighteth  every  man,  coming  into  the  world."  ^ 
And  this  original  light  has  been  creative  of  a  new  life  and 
a  new  moral  world. 

The  latter  of  these  two  assertions  will  not  be  seriously 
disputed.  Christianity  presents  a  changed  conception,  a 
new  type,  of  virtue.  It  is  not  of  the  same  variety  as  the 
Aristotelian  or  the  Platonic  idea  of  virtue.  The  Christian 
character,  when  it  was  first  seen  among  men,  appeared  as 
a  new  thing,  as  a  distinct  moral  type.  The  first  Christians 
were  known  as  those  belonging  to  "the  way."^  That  way 
was  unlike  any  other  way  of  life  which  men  had  pursued. 
Whatever  may  be  the  relations  of  the  Christian  type  of 
character  to  the  past,  or  however  one  may  seek  to  explain 
the  historic  conditions  of  its  appearance,  the  distinctness, 
definiteness,  uniqueness  of  the  Christian  type,  must  be 
conceded.^ 

It  is,  however,  another  question  how  far  this  confessedly 
new  type  of  virtue  —  this  new  world  of  Christianity  — 
requires  as  its  sufficient  cause  the  advent  of  a  new  moral 
personality,  or  the  descent  into  humanity  of  a  new  moral 
Life  and  morally  renewing  Power. 

Although  the  full  answer  to  this  inquiry  belongs  to 
dogmatic  theology,  we  cannot  entirely  pass  it  by  in  our 
endeavor  to  reach  the  ethical  ideal  of  Christianity.  We 
proceed,  therefore,  next  to  consider  this  larger  question, 
concerning  the  originality  of  the  Christian  Ideal,  so  far  as 
we  conceive  it  necessary  to  do  so  from  the  moral  point  of 
view,  and.  for  the  sake  of  ethical  firmness  and  clearness  in 
our  subsequent  determination  of  the  Christian  conception 
of  the  highest  good. 

In  what  sense  was  Jesus'  morality  original  ?     Obviously 

1  John  i.  9.  2  Acts  ix.  2. 

3  It  is  so  reco.2:nized  in  the  New  Testament;  it  is  spoken  of  as  a  new  birth ; 
the  Christian  is  the  new  man,  the  man  wlio  has  been  crncified,  and  who  is 
dead  to  the  world,  who  also  is  risen  with  Christ.  John  iii.  3;  Eph.  iv.  24; 
Col.  iii.  10;  Gal.  ii.  20;  vi.  14;  Col.  iii.  1^. 


KEVELATION   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN    IDEAL  55 

it  did  not  spring  up  without  any  vital  connection  with  the 
ethical-religious  soil  which  the  history  of  Israel  had  pre- 
pared for  it.  Nor  in  the  moral  literature  of  the  ethnic 
religions  is  it  difficult  to  find  single  threads  which  may  be 
matched  with  ethical  precepts  of  the  gospels.  Jesus  as  a 
moral  teacher  cannot  be  regarded  as  original  in  any  sense 
which  would  take  the  truth  of  his  teaching  out  of  the 
moral  conservation  and  continuity  of  history.  It  is  the 
historic  Christ  to  whom  we  look  as  the  fulfilment  of  man's 
moral  ideal.  When  we  listen  to  many  of  the  purer  and 
higher  notes  of  humanit}^,  and  then  hear  the  immediate 
voice  of  Jesus,  we  do  not  hear  One  speaking  as  in  a  new 
tongue  altogether  strange  and  unintelligible  words  ;  rather 
it  seems  as  though  in  all  the  best  who  were  before  Him  we 
had  been  listening  to  echoes  of  some  divine  teaching,  and 
at  last  we  hear  in  His  words  of  eternal  life  the  one  divine 
voice  which  is  the  original  and  the  fulness  of  all  the  echoes 
of  it  in  the  centuries. 

While  the  moral  originality  of  Jesus'  teaching  cannot 
be  regarded  as  a  break  in  the  ethical  continuity  of  his- 
tory, the  uniqueness  of  his  whole  moral  influence  is  not 
explained,  the  ethical  life  of  his  gospel  is  by  no  means 
accounted  for,  by  anything  that  had  gone  before  it.  The 
ethics  of  Jesus  witness  to  some  new  access  of  light ;  the 
Lord's  moral  teaching  has  in  it  the  living  power  of  an 
immediate  revelation  of  truth.  The  evidences  of  this  kind 
of  moral  originality,  the  evidences  of  a  new  moral  revela- 
tion in  the  mind  of  Jesus,  lie  on  the  surface  of  our  gospels. 
The  proof  of  Jesus'  moral  uniqueness  is  to  be  found  along 
two  historic  lines  of  investigation :  first,  the  moral  creative 
power  which  has  gone  forth  from  it  leads  back  to  it  as  its 
sufficient  cause ;  secondly,  the  person  of  Jesus,  as  it  is 
mirrored  in  the  gospels,  is  self-revelation  of  his  ethical 
uniqueness,  or  super-humanness. 

The  Jesus  of  these  gospels  was  the  revelation  of  the 
divine  to  himself.  He  found  in  his  own  immediate  self-con- 
sciousness light  from  above.  The  Christ  does  not  seem  to 
find  his  way  in  reflected  light,  but  to  walk  with  sure,  sunny 
self-consciousness  in  the  immediate  light  of  a  Divine  pres- 


56  CHPwISTIAN  ETHICS 

ence.  He  sees,  he  knows,  he  speaks,  he  acts,  not  with  hesita- 
tion, not  after  much  reasoning,  not  in  grave  doubts,  but 
surely,  instantl}^  with  absolute  clearness  of  vision,  as  One 
w^ho  is  of  the  day  and  who  knows  tho  Father.  There  is  a 
moral  immediateness  in  the  whole  teaching  of  Jesus,  to 
which  some  approximations  may  be  found  in  the  momen- 
tary inspirations  of  the  prophets  and  seers,  but  which  in  its 
constancy  and  steady  clearness  of  revealing  power  is  with- 
out human  precedent,  and  original  as  a  personal  revela- 
tion from  God.  We  may  follow  and  watch  the  Jesus  of 
the  gospels  as  he  walked  among  men  in  the  light  of  his 
own  clear  spirit,  as  he  dwelt  in  the  absolute  certainties  of 
his  direct  perceptions  of  God's  truth,  while  the  question- 
ings of  Pharisees  and  Sadducees,  of  friends  and  foes,  flung 
their  shadows  across  his  path,  and  gathered  life's  sinful 
perplexities  to  confuse  his  wisdom.  This  daily  life  of 
Jesus  will  become  to  us  the  evidence  of  its  own  indwelling 
Light;  we  can  hardly  help  perceiving,  what  John  saw 
clearly,  that  ''  the  life  was  the  light  of  men."  The  nearer 
we  approach  through  critical  and  historical  studies  to  the 
real  Jesus  of  history,  and  the  more  closely  we  succeed  in 
bringing  those  moral  teachers  who  have  resembled  him  in 
any  respects  into  broad  and  full  comparison  with  the  his- 
toric Christ,  the  more  we  shall  find  ourselves  compelled 
to  agree  with  those  officers  who  had  been  sent  to  bring 
Jesus,  and  who  had  let  him  go  untouched:  "Never  man 
spake  like  this  man."  ^ 

The  transcendent  originality  of  Jesus  stands  out  from 
the  whole  background  of  history  still  more  strikingly 
when  we  look  up  from  the  broadening  radiance  of  the 
Christian  ages  to  the  Christ  from  whom  the  new  illumina- 
tion of  the  world  has  proceeded.  If  we  trace  backwards 
the  courses  of  beneficence,  reformation,  subjection  of  peo- 
ples to  moral  order,  conversion  of  empires,  and  renewals 
of  decrepit  civilization  through  modern  liistory,  we  come  to 
him  who  was  born  King,  and  over  whose  cross  was  wiitten 
in  every  language  the  name  of  King. 

For  our  present  purpose  it  u  sufficient  to  maintain  that 

1  John  vii.  4G. 


EEVELATION   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN    IDEAL  57 

Christian  ethics  owes  its  authority  to  a  unique  historical 
Cause,  and  finds  the  incarnation  of  its  ideal  in  the  person 
of  the  Lord  Christ.  There  is  given  for  Christian  ethics 
to  contemplate  no  mere  speculation  concerning  virtue,  no 
dream  of  the  highest  good  ;  it  follows  the  teaching  of 
the  personal  Life  which  has  been  the  revelation  of  the 
ideal  humanness,  and  which  is  the  continuous  inspiration 
of  the  virtue  that  seeks  for  perfectness  like  the  perfec- 
tion of  the  Father  in  heaven.  Christian  ethics  will  be 
consequently  the  unfolding  and  application  to  human  life 
in  all  its  spheres  and  relations  of  the  divinely  human 
Ideal  which  has  been  historically  given  in  Christ.^ 

Canon  Westcott  makes  a  valid  distinction  between  a  historical  ' '  ten- 
dency towards,"  and  a  "  tendency  to  produce,  the  central  truth  of  Christi- 
anity "  (^Gospel  of  the  Resurrection,  p.  59), 

The  figure  of  a  tangential  force  might  be  employed  to  illustrate  the 
relation  of  the  life  of  Jesus  to  history.  It  enters  into  history  and  becomes 
coincident  with  certain  historic  tendencies  ;  yet  it  enters  at  its  own  angle, 
and  from  without  the  circle  of  existing  human  forces.  The  angle  of  inci- 
dence of  Jesus'  life  on  humanity  is  plainly  distinguishable.  It  may  be 
measured  in  terms  of  his  teachings,  such  as  the  verilies  of  his  gospels,  and 
by  his  mighty  acts,  as  well  as  in  the  whole  tenor  of  his  personal  influence, 
and  his  self-consciousness  of  his  peculiar  relation  to  the  Father.  The 
entire  Messianic  and  redemptive  consciousness  and  influence  of  Jesus 
indicates  that  his  life  entered  into  ours  from  above.  The  doctrine  of  the 
Person  of  Christ,  which  the  Church  has  worked  out  in  its  creed,  is  a 
rational  endeavor  to  understand  this  personal  uniqueness  and  moral 
originality  of  Jesus.  But  to  follow  the  moral  into  the  theological  doc- 
trine of  the  nature  of  the  Christ  would  be  for  us  to  go  beyond  our  present 
bounds.  It  belongs  to  dogmatics  to  show^  how  far  the  moral  originality  of 
Jesus  requires  for  its  sufficient  cause  a  metaphysical  uniqueness  of  Jesus, 
—  his  divine  Sonship. 

We  may  note  in  passing  that  there  is  nothing  unscientific,  or  contrary 
to  any  rational  idea  of  the  continuity  of  nature,  in  the  idea  of  new  moral 
and  spiritual  force  touching  nature  and  becoming  an  influence  in  history, 
although  it  is  received  at  some  point  in  the  course  of  evolution  as  a  tan- 
gential impact.  The  continuity  is  not  thereby  broken,  although  acceler- 
ated or  altered  motion  may  result.     Rather  the  continuity  of  nature,  when 

1  For  a  fuller  and  more  theological  discussion  of  the  divine  originality  of 
Jesus,  see  the  author's  Old  Faiths  in  Neio  Light,  eh,  v.  For  an  instruc- 
tive comparison  between  Jesus  and  contemporary  Judaism,  see  Delitzsch, 
Jesus  and  Hillel.  For  a  profoundly  exhaustive  discussion  of  the  relations 
between  Philo  and  the  New  Testament  doctrine  of  the  incarnate  Word, 
Dorner's  Doctrine  of  the  Person  of  Christ  should  be  studied,  especially  by 
those  who  catch  at  superficial  resemblances  to  the  Christian  teaching  in  the 
Alexandrian  wisdom  and  miss  the  deeper  dififerences. 


58  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

its  course  is  deflected,  requires  for  its  own  preservation  this  supposition 
of  its  reaction  under  new  impact  from  the  larger  universe  around  it.  Tlie 
supernatural,  or  cosmical,  divine  power  may  manifest  its  entrance  by 
temporary  disturbances  at  its  points  of  impact ;  then  it  becomes  natural, 
or  connatural,  and  works  on  in  the  unity  of  all  the  forces  of  life.  So  motion 
may  be  conceived  of  as  force  communicated  to  matter ;  so  the  access  of 
life  to  matter  ready  for  its  impact  may  be  regarded  as  the  new  impulse 
which  becomes  another  law  and  produces  a  higher  order  of  nature.  So 
the  life  of  the  Christ  coming  from  above,  and  signalized  at  first  as  a 
supernatural  advent,  works  on  and  becomes  naturalized  in  the  spiritual 
forces  of  humanity.  Since  Christ  the  kingdom  of  God  is  within  man. 
Mr.  Wallace,  in  the  concluding  chapter  of  his  volume  on  Darwinism, 
shows  at  length  that  new  causes  do  not  break  the  continuity  of  nature 
(pp.  463  sq.). 

The  ethical  Ideal,  which  was  immediately  given  in  Jesus 
Christ,  is  mediated  to  the  successive  generations  of  men 
through  the  continuous  and  increasing  life  which  is  called 
forth  and  controlled  by  it.  This  ethical  Christian  experi- 
ence, and  its  continuity,  is  realized  in  a  twofold  process : 
it  has  been  conserved  and  transmitted  through  Christian 
testimony  and  tradition,  in  the  historic  continuity  of  the 
Church;  and  it  is  also  vitally  reproduced  in  the  life  of 
each  Christian  man.  We  pass  next,  therefore,  to  the  con- 
sideration of  both  these  forms  in  which  the  Christian  Ideal 
is  continued  and  developed,  —  its  external  mediation,  and 
its  ever  new  spiritual  reproduction  in  personal  experience. 

II.    THE   HISTORIC   MEDIATION  OF   THE   CHRISTIAN 

IDEAL 

The  Christian  conception  of  good  is  brought  to  us  both 
in  the  Christian  consciousness,  which  is  the  continuous 
and  ever  living  work  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  and  also  in 
those  written  Scriptures  which  are  received  as  an  authori- 
tative expression  of  the  mind  that  was  in  Christ  since  they 
proceeded  from  an  immediate  experience  of  him  under 
special  promises  of  his  Spirit. 

Before  we  can  proceed  to  the  specific  determination  of 
the  Christian  virtues  and  duties,  we  must  come  to  some 
clear  understanding  concerning  the  authority  to  which 
appeal  may  rightly  and  finally  be  made  for  our  whole  Chris- 
tian conception  of  life.     The  general  statement  just  given 


REVELATIOX    OF   THE    CHRISTIAN    IDEAL  59 

concerning  the  historic  mediation  to  us  of  the  Christian 
Ideal  requires  us  to  enter  more  particularly  into  the  rela- 
tion of  the  Scriptures  to  the  Christian  consciousness.  It 
will  Be  noticed,  however,  that  in  our  form  of  statement, 
we  have  put  the  Scriptures  in  the  line  and  order  of  the 
whole  historic  working  of  Christ  in  the  spiritual  conscious- 
ness and  life  of  humanity ;  for  only  in  that  order  is  their 
authority  to  be  maintained  and  defined. 

The  Scriptures  themselves  are  products  of  spiritual 
experience :  the  Old  Testament  the  product  of  the  expe- 
rience of  an  anticipatory  Messianic  revelation ;  the  New 
Testament  the  product  or  deposit  of  a  distinctive  expe- 
rience of  the  Christ.  Only  as  the  Scriptures  are  products 
of  the  Spirit  in  human  experience  can  they  become  norms 
or  intelligible  rules  for  human  life.  It  can  hardly  be 
insisted  too  urgently  that  the  inspiration  of  the  sacred 
Scri|)ture  is  itself  put  in  peril,  if  it  be  held  separate  from 
the  whole  work  of  God's  Spirit  in  humanity,  if  it  is  not 
comprehended  as  an  element  and  factor  in  the  whole 
spiritual  experience  which  men  have  gained  of  God  and 
the  Christ.  The  doctrine  of  the  Spirit  in  the  Bible  is  a 
special  part  of  the  still  larger  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
in  the  life  of  the  world.  The  question  concerning  the 
inspiration  of  the  Scriptures  is  an  important,  yet  subor- 
dinate part  of  the  whole  question  concerning  the  working 
of  the  Divine  Spirit  in  human  history,  and  particularly 
within  the  Christian  consciousness  of  the  Church.  If  the 
word  Church  be  taken  largely  as  inclusive  of  the  common 
and  historic  consciousness  of  Christian  humanity  (and  not 
narrowly  as  identical  with  any  external  form  or  ecclesias- 
tical order),  the  remark  may  be  repeated  without  hesitancy : 
"  It  is,  we  may  perhaps  say,  becoming  more  and  more  diffi- 
cult to  believe  in  the  Bible  without  believing  in  the 
Church."  1 

This  question  concerning  the  authority  of  the  Scriptures 
(so  far  as  for  the  purposes  of  Christian  ethics  we  are 
called  to  determine  it)  is  this :  How  far  are  certain  Scrip- 
tures which  issued  from  immediate  apostolic  experience 

^  Lux  Mitndi,  p.  338.    See  below,  p.  74. 


60  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

of  Christ,  and  wliicli  were  the  first-fruits  of  his  Spirit,  to 
be  regarded  as  an  authoritative  rule  for  subsequent  Chris- 
tian character  and  conduct  ? 

AVe  proceed,  accordingly,  to  inquire  how  historically 
-the  Christian  ideal  has  been  brought  to  us  through  certain 
sacred  Scriptures ;  and,  secondly,  how  such  communication 
of  the  Christian  Ideal  through  the  Bible  stands  related 
to  the  present  and  future  mediation  of  it  through  the  same 
Spirit  in  the  Christian  consciousness  of  men. 

§  1.       THE    MEDIATION    OF    THE    CHRISTIAN   IDEAL    THROUGH    THE 
SCRIPTURES 

1.   The  Moral  Ideal  in  the  Old  Testament. 

The  Old  Testament  marks  the  period  of  its  imperfect, 
yet  real  and  growing  vitality  and  power.  The  morality 
of  the  Old  Testament  was  incomplete,  in  many  respects 
defective,  and  neither  in  its  outward  sanctions  nor  its 
inward  motives  a  final  morality  for  man ;  yet  it  was  real 
morality,  striving  towards  better  things,  growing  from  a 
genuine  ethical  root  into  the  light  and  fruitfulness  of  the 
coming  season  of  divine  grace.  The  method  of  the  mo- 
rality of  the  Old  Testament  is  educational  and  progressive  ; 
its  whole  character  is  preparatory  and  prophetic.^  We 
should  not  fail  to  recognize,  however,  among  its  prepara- 
tory imperfections  the  good  fruit  which  remains  in  the 
prophetic  literature  ;  w,e  shall  have  occasion  further  on 
to  note  the  political  ethics  of  which  the  prophets  of  old 
might  be  our  present-day  teachers.  If  the  ethics  of  the 
Old  Dispensation  had  not  passed  into  the  fulfilment  of 
the  New,  the  Hebrew  prophets  and  poets  would  still  be 
the  world's  most  inspiring  teachers  of  high  ethical  hopes 
and  ideals,  and  the  moral  code  of  Israel  would  be  the 
school  of  righteousness,  reverence,  and  law,  to  which  the 
generations  should  go  for  the  loftiest  instruction.^ 

1  The  right  conception  of  the  grachiahiess  and  progressive  methods  of  both 
moral  and  religious  revelation  in  the  Bible  is  no  modern  idea,  although  it  has 
sometimes  been  lost  sight  of  in  post-reformation  theories  of  the  Scriptures. 
See  Lnx  Mitndi  for  interesting  citations  from  the  Church  fathers  on  tliis  point, 
p.  329. 

2  See  the  author's  Morality  of  the  Old  Testament  for  fuller  discussion  of 
this  subject  (pp.  127  sq.). 


KEVELATION    OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    IDEAL  61 

2.    The  Christian  Ideal  in  the  Xew  Testament. 

These  writings  —  the  New  Testament  Scriptures  —  be- 
come ethically  normative  by  virtue  of  their  direct  reflection 
of  the  mind  of  Christ,  and  their  special  receptivity  of  his 
Spirit. 

The  immediate  light  from  Christ  in  these  writings 
makes  them  the  primary  authorities  for  his  Church.  The 
ultimate  reason  for  their  selection  from  current  Christian 
literature  or  tradition  was  a  most  legitimate  because  a  very 
natural  reason :  these  writings  were  seen  to  be  the  nearest 
and  clearest  reflections  of  Christ  which  the  Church  pos- 
sessed. They  came  closer  to  Him,  and  had  more  immedi- 
ately His  authority  than  all  other  early  Christian  litera- 
ture. 

The  spiritual  supremacy  of  the  writings  which  con- 
stitute the  New  Testament  canon,  was  the  result  of  the 
uniqueness  of  the  position  in  which  their  writers,  or  the  cir- 
cle of  believers  in  which  they  originated,  stood  to  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ.  Eye-witnesses  testified  of  Him.  Com- 
panions of  the  first  disciples  and  chosen  apostles  received 
their  testimony.  These  sacred  writings  are  the  first-fruits 
of  the  Spirit  of  the  risen  Lord.  They  contain  the  inter- 
pretations of  the  life  and  the  teaching  of  Jesus  which  were 
current  in  the  apostolic  circle  of  witnesses  to  him,  among 
the  men  who  had  been  chosen,  trained,  and  fitted  to  wit- 
ness to  the  truth  as  it  Avas  in  Jesus,  and  to  whom  he  had 
given  the  promise  of  such  illumination  and  power  of  his 
Spirit  as  they  should  need  to  fulfil  the  work  which  he  had 
committed  to  them,  and  to  preach  his  gospel  to  the  whole 
world.  The  normative  authority  of  their  writings  (includ- 
ing such  as  may  have  proceeded  from  them  through 
others  connected  with  them)  arises  from  the  immediate 
relation  of  these  chosen  witnesses  to  the  Christ,  and  fi'om 
the  consequent  Christian  quality  which  the  Church  recog- 
nizes as  residing  peculiarly  in  their  writings.  It  is  impos- 
sible that  any  other  writings  can  be  sacred  in  the  same  sense 
as  are  these  immediate  testimonies  to  Jesus.  But  their  au- 
thority is  theirs  only  as  it  was  Christ's,  and  as  his  authority 
is  directly  reproduced  in  theirs.     Their  authority  springs 


62  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

from  their  special  and  unequalled  relation  to  the  source  of 
all  Christian  truth.  The  source  of  infallibility  of  a  Scrip- 
ture in  the  last  analysis  can  be  only  Christ,  and  the  Spirit 
of  tlie  Christ ;  the  degree  and  power  of  the  authority  of 
any  inspired  Scripture  depends  upon  the  closeness  and 
certainty  of  its  relation  to  the  teaching  and  the  Spirit  of 
Jesus.  A  Scripture  becomes  of  doubtful  canonicity  the 
more  the  immediate  Christian  source  and  quality  of  it, 
either  by  critical  studies  or  difficulties  in  its  contents,  is 
ithrown  into  doubt  or  obscurity. 

This  is  only  saying  that  there  cannot  be  two  normative 
authorities  in  religion  or  in  morals,  two  rules  of  faith  and 
practice  ;  one  the  Christian  rule,  and  the  other  a  Scriptural 
rule ;  one  the  personal  authority  of  Christ,  and  the  other 
the  authority  of  his  witnesses ;  one  the  reign  of  the  Chris- 
tian Ideal  as  exemplified  in  the  Person  of  Christ,  and  the 
other  the  letter  of  tlie  Scriptures  which  declare  that  Ideal. 
There  is  but  one  final  authority,  but  one  regulative  power 
of  faith  and  practice,  —  Christ  himself,  and  the  Spirit  of 
Christ. 

It  does  not  detract,  therefore,  from  the  proper  authority 
of  the  New  Testament  as  the  immediate  reflection  and 
specially  prepared  and  attested  witness  to  Christ,  when 
we  discern  in  it,  as  we  have  already  discovered  in  the  Old 
Testament,  signs  of  a  growth  in  knowledge  of  Christ,  and 
a  progressive  Christianization  of  thought  and  life  by  the 
Spirit  of  Christ.  Such  signs  are  naturally  not  so  marked, 
such  progress  of  doctrine  not  so  pronounced  in  the  New 
Testament,  as  in  the  Old;  for  a  higher  stage  of  revelation 
has  been  reached ;  the  whole  conception  of  life  has  been 
lifted  up  in  Christ,  and  the  thought  of  the  Christian  dis- 
ciples moves  off  at  once  on  a  radiant  height. 

Some  signs,  however,  of  progress  in  doctrine,  and  some 
indications  of  advancement  especially  in  the  application 
of  Christian  ideas  to  the  practical  problems  of  life,  may  be 
discerned  even  within  the  writings  of  the  New  Testament. 
We  may  trace  in  the  book  of  Acts  and  the  Epistles  signs  of 
growth  in  knowledge  of  Christ,  and  also  of  an  increasing 
clearness  and  firmness  in  measuring  the  various  practical 
relations  of  human  life  by  the  new  law  of  the  Spirit. 


KEVELATIOX   OF    THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  63 

This  progress  in  moral  as  well  as  religious  knowledge 
of  the  Christ  will  become  obvious  if  we  compare  the  chief 
personages  who  became  successively,  in  the  providential 
order  of  the  New  Testament  history,  the  teachers  and 
leaders  of  the  primitive  Church.  And  this  general  advance 
in  appreciation  and  application  to  life  of  the  truths  of 
Christ,  which  may  thus  be  discovered  in  the  visions  and 
the  tasks  given  to  the  successive  apostolic  leaders  of  the 
Church,  can  be  traced  also  if  we  compare  carefully  the 
earlier  and  later  writings  of  the  same  apostles.  Thus 
the  fourth  gospel  and  the  epistles  of  St.  John  are  distinctly 
less  Judaic  in  their  language  and  thought,  are  more  simply 
human  and  universally  Christian  in  their  tone  and  teach- 
ing than  the  Apocalypse  which  possibly  may  have  been 
written  by  the  same  apostle  in  his  earlier  Jewish  Christian 
years. 

Similarly,  St.  Paul's  later  epistles  show  that  he  has 
reached  calmer  heights,  breathes  a  clearer  and  more  lumi- 
nous air,  and  beholds  larger  prospects  of  redemption,  than 
when  he  began  to  preach  to  the  Gentiles.  He  knows  the 
Spirit  of  Christ  more  profoundly,  he  comprehends  more 
fully  the  world-wide  and  even  cosmical  significance  of 
the  gospel,  as  his  experience  broadens,  and  his  mission- 
ary life  brings  him  into  new  relations  with  all  men,  and 
his  apostolic  course  nears  its  assured  and  triumphant 
end. 

These  sacred  writings,  it  is  evident  from  what  has  just 
been  said,  are  to  be  taken  as  a  whole  and  in  the  moral  and 
spiritual  teaching  which  issues  finally  from  them,  in  order 
that  they  may  constitute  a  normative  authority  of  faith 
and  practice.  The  Christian  Ideal,  which  was  embodied 
in  Jesus  Christ,  is  presented  to  us,  not  by  Paul  alone  "or  by 
John,  nor  by  either  of  these  writers  in  any  single  epoch 
of  his  growing  apprehension  of  Christian  truth,  but  by  the 
concurrent  and  full  and  final  witness  of  all  the  prophets  and 
apostles.  The  Bible  as  a  whole,  and  in  its  final  ethical- 
religious  development  of  truth,  is  to  be  regarded  by  Prot- 
estantism as  the  authoritative  outward  rule  of  faith  and 
practice. 


64  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

When  we  have  recognized  this  process  of  moral  develop- 
ment in  the  teaching  of  the  Scriptures  down  to  the  very 
end  of  the  New  Testament  canon,  the  question  forces  itself 
upon  our  attention,  Has  this  development  of  Christian 
truth  stopped  at  that  point?  Or  is  there  any  further 
unfolding  of  the  moral  ideal  which  these  sacred  writings 
have  authoritatively  reflected  ?  Admitting  that  the  growth 
of  distinctively  Christian  ethics  began  with  the  apostolic 
teaching,  Avhy  should  we  regard  the  process  as  closed  with 
their  moral  precepts  ?  Is  there  not  some  further  principle, 
complementary  of  the  authority  of  these  Scriptures,  which 
we  are  to  recognize  in  the  progressive  impartation  and 
realization  on  earth  of  the  Christian  ideal  ? 

It  becomes  necessary  for  us,  therefore,  before  we  can 
proceed  further,  to  define  the  relation  of  Scripture  and 
faith.  Want  of  insight  and  of  clearness  at  this  point  may 
involve  our  whole  system  of  ethical  judgments  in  confu- 
sion. There  is  peril  of  falling  on  the  one  side  into  a 
bondage  to  the  letter  which  would  prevent  a  free  and 
broad  application  of  Christianity  to  life ;  and  on  the  other 
hand  there  is  danger  of  plunging  into  a  hasty  indepen- 
dence of  outward  authority  and  Scriptural  guidance,  in 
which  the  individual  would  soon  become  lost  from  the 
common  heritage  of  faith  and  wander  into  lonely  helpless- 
ness and  confusion. 


§  2.  THE  MEDIATION  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  THROUGH  THE 
CONTINUOUS  SPIRITUAL  LIFE  AND  PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIAN  CON- 
SCIOUSNESS   OF    MEN 

1.  There  is  a  principle  of  spiritual  continuity  in  Chris- 
tianity. 

The  power  of  Christ  has  entered  as  a  force  which 
remains  in  human  life,  and  which  is  continuously  produc- 
tive of  its  natural  effects  in  human  history.  The  spiritual 
continuity  of  the  life  and  influence  of  Jesus  in  the  Chris- 
tian world-age  is  an  observed  and  persistent  fact  of  Chris- 
tianity. We  must  admit  the  existence  and  constant 
operation  in   our  world   of   an  organizing  and  vitalizing 


REVELATION   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  65 

Christian  principle,  whatever  may  be  our  conception  of 
its  nature  or  its  laws. 

An  evidence  ever  before  the  eyes  of  men  of  this  spiritual 
continuity  of  power  in  Christianity,  has  been,  and  still 
is,  the  organic  life  and  consciousness  of  the  Church.  In 
successive  forms,  through  all  controversy  and  change, 
essentially  the  same  though  always  renewed,  the  Church 
has  been  "the  Spirit-bearing  body  of  Christ."  And  the 
Christian  consciousness,  which  finds  expression  and  which 
persists  indestructibly  in  the  creed  and  worship  of  the 
Church,  is  the  one  continuous  consciousness  of  the  new 
humanity  which  was  created  in  Christ  Jesus,  and  which 
through  many  variations,  repeated  transformations,  and 
ever  new  adaptations  to  its  environment,  preserves  its 
typical  Christian  character,  and  witnesses  through  all  the 
ages  to  that  one  and  the  self-same  Spirit  by  which  it  has 
been  quickened  and  in  whose  power  it  has  its  life.  There 
has  been  no  more  striking  fact  since  the  world  began,  and 
none  more  divinely  significant,  than  is  this  historic  fact  of 
the  unity  and  continuity  of  the  Christian  type  of  manhood 
in  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord. 

Moreover,  this  historic  fact  of  continuous  and  ever  new 
Christianity  is  found  to  correspond  with  and  to  fulfil  the 
promise  of  the  Christ  to  his  disciples.  His  gospel  ended 
with  the  assurance  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  His  last  word  was 
a  pledge  of  his  perpetual  spiritual  presence  and  power  on 
earth.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  was  Jesus'  thought 
and  intention  that  his  life  should  be  continued  in  spiritual 
grace  and  energy  in  the  lives  of  his  disciples,  and  his 
presence  be  always  potential  in  the  communion  of  his 
Church.  The  Christ  expected  to  be  influential  and  author- 
itative in  this  world,  and  with  increasing  power  and  do- 
minion until  he  shall  come  again.  He  has  been  spiritually 
present,  inspiring,  organizing,  reforming  human  lives  and 
institutions,  and  making  all  things  new.  So  far  the 
promise  of  the  Lord  and  the  truth  of  history  seem  to 
match,  forming  one  increasing  pattern  of  divinity,  and 
revealing  one  purpose  in  the  continuous  and  unfolding 
order  of  Christianity. 


66  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

2.  The  Christian  consciousness  is  not  only  a  continuous, 
but  also  a  progressive  appropriation  of  the  Christian  Ideal. 

In  one  age  some  appreciation  and  appropriation  of  the 
true  idea  of  Christian  life  and  society  has  been  gained,  and 
then  there  has  followed  a  new  idealization  of  the  good 
which  had  been  realized.  The  ideal  becomes  real  among 
men  only  to  ascend  and  to  appear  in  some  higher  spiritual 
manifestation.  It  is  as  though  Christian  history  were 
itself  a  repeated  manifestation  and  ascension  of  the  Son 
of  man ;  —  the  ideal  which  has  been  realized  in  some 
historic  good  is  still  further  exalted  and  glorified  in  Chris- 
tian thought  and  devotion.  The  progress  of  faith  is  a 
manifestation,  an  ascension,  and  a  coming  again,  ever 
repeated,  of  the  Christian  ideal  among  the  disciples.  The 
general  law  of  Christian  progress  may  be  stated  as  a 
realization  of  existing  Christian  ideas,  and  then  their 
further  Christianization  after  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord. 

To  maintain,  as  we  do,  that  there  is  possible  progress  in 
the  ethics  of  Christianity  carries  with  it,  also,  the  implica- 
tion that  Christian  theology  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  a 
closed  science.  Without  traversing  the  whole  field  into 
which  the  discussion  of  progress  in  theology  might  lead, 
it  is  necessary  for  our  ethical  purpose  to  determine  in 
what  directions  progress  beyond  the  Scriptures  may  be 
admitted  in  Christian  thought  as  well  as  in  the  applica- 
tion of  Christian  truth  to  life.  For  the  latter  cannot  be 
admitted  without  assuming  the  possibility  of  some  progress 
in  the  knowledge  of  truth  for  life,  or  some  progress,  also, 
in  theology.  Hence  we  proceed  to  indicate  the  nature 
and  direction  of  such  progress,  so  far  as  is  necessary  in 
order  that  we  may  reach  the  premises  which  our  further 
ethical  discussion  will  require  concerning  the  relation  of 
the  Scriptures  to  our  progressive  Christian  moral  con- 
sciousness. 

There  can  be  no  progress  of  the  Christian  consciousness 
away  from  the  fundamental  facts  or  vital  truths  of  Chris- 
tianity. Progress  in  doctrine  and  in  ethics  proceeds  from 
the  initial  facts  and  truths  of  Christ's  life  and  teaching, 
but  it  will  not  break  its  continuity  with  them.     This  is 


EEVELATION    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  67 

only  saying  that  the  progress  throughout  will  be  typically 
and  essentially  Christian. 

Advance  in  any  knowledge  may  take  place  in  two  direc- 
tions ;  it  may  be  either  extensive  or  intensive ;  it  may 
consist  in  a  larger  comprehension  of  facts,  or  in  a  clearer 
insight  into  their  nature.  Within  the  limits  of  the  canon 
of  Scriptures  progress  in  both  these  kinds  is  admitted. 
But  it  is  assumed  by  many  that,  since  the  Scriptural  canon 
was  closed,  progress  in  theology  has  been  permitted  to  the 
Church  only  in  the  latter  kind.  The  only  progress,  it  is 
held,  which  can  be  admitted  in  consistency  with  the  integ- 
rity of  a  completed  revelation  is  progress  in  its  inter- 
pretation. 

It  is  at  least  conceivable  that  God  may  have  given  a 
positive  revelation  of  some  truths,  and  left  other  truths 
to  be  brought  out  in  the  processes  of  Christian  life  after 
the  close  of  the  more  immediate  or  supernatural  revelation 
of  his  will.  The  only  relevant  question  is,  not  whether 
in  consistency  with  the  supposed  integrity  of  canonical 
Scripture  such  continued  divine  education  of  man  can  be 
pursued,  but  whether  it  has  been  pursued.  Have  we  made 
progress  in  both  kinds,  by  means  of  the  increase  of  the 
Christian  materials  of  knowledge,  and  through  clearer 
Christian  insight,  since  the  New  Testament  days  ? 

When  the  question  is  reduced  to  this  decisive  issue, 
there  would  seem  to  be  but  one  answer  to  be  given  to  it. 
Progress  in  theology  has  been  made  in  two  ways. 

(1)  New  materials  have  been  added  to  the  science  of 
Christian  theology  since  the  days  of  the  apostles.  For 
instance,  with  regard  to  the  kingdom  of  God  in  the  world, 
history  has  furnished  us  with  new  and  enlarged  materials 
of  knowledge  of  which  apostles  were  profoundly  ignorant. 
The  nineteenth  century  has  many  important  facts  to  com- 
prehend in  its  doctrine  of  the  kingdom  of  God  and  the 
laws  of  its  extension,  facts  beyond  any  possible  knowledge 
of  the  first  missionary  apostle.  And  even  though  there 
had  been  granted  to  St.  Paul  farther  and  more  prophetic 
discernment  of  the  reaches  of  Christian  history  than  his 
uncertain    and   sometimes  wavering  thoughts  concerning 


68  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

the  second  coming  of  the  Lord  would  indicate  that  he  had 
obtained,  still  even  a  high  degree  of  prophetic  vision  con- 
cerning the  future  cannot  be  equal  to  the  knowledge  of 
definite  and  actual  experience:  a  thousand  years  of  the 
Lord  in  dim  prophetic  foreshadowings  of  them  are  not  of 
so  great  worth  to  Christian  science  as  are  those  years  when 
comprehended  in  certain  and  solid  history.  These  new 
facts  of  Christian  history  constitute  a  positive  contribution 
to  the  revelation  of  God's  purpose  concerning  his  kingdom. 
Over  all  the  prophets  and  apostles  we  have  an  advantage 
in  our  study  of  the  mystery  of  redemption,  —  as  an 
observer  who  has  determined  by  new  observations  the  dis- 
tance between  the  earth  and  the  sun  or  some  near  star,  has 
a  decided  advantage  over  the  astronomy  which  before  him 
had  only  a  conjectural  base  line  for  its  heavenly  computa- 
tions. By  this  truer  base  line  which  Christian  history  has 
determined,  Ave  are  enabled  to  measure  with  larger  compre- 
hension the  work  of  Christ,  and  to  understand  better  its 
universal  relations.  Christian  history  is  itself  an  ever 
increasing  fact  of  divine  revelation.  It  is  a  fact  of  divine 
teaching  added  to  the  Bible.  It  is  new  teaching,  although 
continuous  with  the  old.  Moreover,  from  the  mastery  of 
the  laws  of  God  which  our  sciences  are  gaining,  new  data 
are  brought  within  the  circle  of  Christian  light  both  to 
receive  Christian  interpretation  and  to  lend  themselves, 
also,  to  further  interpretations  of  Christianity.  New 
knowledge  of  God's  thought  is  thus  added  to  his  Word, 
and  the  Bible  is  put  in  a  larger  setting  of  truth. 

New  facts,  however  made  known,  are  revelations  of 
God  in  his  universe.  They  are  to  be  harmonized  with  all 
preceding  revelations.  They  shed  their  light  back  upon 
that  special  divine  revelation  which  was  finished  in  the 
Christ.  He  Himself  is  the  Light  in  which  we  are  to 
discover  the  highest  and  final  relations  of  all  laws  and 
sciences  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  our  increasing  knowledge 
of  the  universe,  of  the  natural  processes  of  the  ascent  of 
the  creation  to  life  and  consciousness,  of  the  growing 
spiritualization  of  matter  up  to  the  mind  of  man,  and  of 
the  prophetic  significance  of  the  whole  order  of  the  crea- 


REVELATION   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  69 

tion  beyond  man's  present  imperfect  attainment  of  spiritual 
being,  —  all  the  new  facts,  the  larger  groupings,  the  pro- 
founcler  sacredness  and  spiritualness,  which  we  are 
finding  out  in  nature,  shed  light  back  upon  the  wdiole 
Christian  order  of  the  creation,  —  the  eternal  purpose 
of  God  in  Christ  Jesus.^  We  hold,  therefore,  that 
Christian  theology,  although  proceeding  from  a  special 
revelation,  which  is  final  and  authoritative  within  its  own 
limits,  is  nevertheless  to  be  regarded  as  a  progressive 
science  because  God  was  not  through  with  man  when  the 
last  of  the  apostles  died,  but  God  in  history  has  been  add- 
ing new  facts  and  disclosing  further  processes  of  his 
Spirit  for  our  Christian  education.  To  suppose  that 
theology  is  a  closed  system  of  truth,  incapable  of  further 
expansion,  ignores  the, two  following  considerations  :  First, 
God  has  reserved  some  of  his  thoughts  of  grace  to 
become  better  known  as  men  shall  become  intelligent  and 
Christian  enough  to  perceive  them.  To  believe  that  cer- 
tain essential  truths  have  been  supernaturally  disclosed, 
does  not  prevent  us  from  hoping  that  we  may  learn  still 
more  of  God  through  further  natural  processes  of  Chris- 
tain  life  or  universal  history.  Secondly,  God  has  left 
important  and  interpretative  truths  of  his  kingdom  to  be 
discovered,  and  to  be  brought  to  the  knowledge  which  is 
given  in  the  Bible,  through  the  scientific  acquisitions  which 
may  be  gained  from  time  to  time.  By  such  additions  of 
new  facts  of  history,  and  from  such  contributions  of  fresh 
materials  of  knowledge  to  Christian  theology,  progress  is  to 
be  expected  until  the  end  of  this  world-age.  Indeed,  the 
last  day  of  the  world  will  itself  be  a  still  further  revela- 
tion, a  new  and  a  final  addition  of  history  to  the  volume 
of  the  Word,  and  to  the  science  of  Christian  theology. 

(2)  The  other  open  way  of  progress  in  theology  lies 
through  the  better  appropriation  and  interpretation  of  the 
contents  of  revelation,  which  are  given  in  the  Scriptures. 
It  is  needless,  however,  to  argue  that  this  subjective  way 
of  improving  our  theology  is  ever  open  to  us ;  the  possi- 
bility of  it  is  generally  admitted. 

1  Eph.  iii.  11. 


70  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

It  has  been  necessary  for  us  to  devote  this  much  of  our 
space  to  a  vindication  of  the  chiims  of  Christian  theology 
to  a  position  among  the  progressive  sciences,  because 
Christian  ethics  in  its  intimate  relation  with  theology  will 
share  in  any  gain  or  advancement  of  theology,  and  Chris- 
tian ethics  must  claim  to  be  also  a  progressive  science  of 
morals.  Indeed,  historically,  Christian  theology  and  ethics 
have  advanced  on  parallel  lines ;  and,  when  a  step  forward 
is  taken  by  the  one,  the  other  cannot  lag  long  behind.  Any 
freshening  of  men's  Christian  ideas  of  God  will  be  attended 
by  a  quickened  sense  of  their  Christian  obligations.  And 
more  ethical  conceptions  of  religion  react  powerfully  upon 
theological  systems.^ 

We  have  reached  at  this  point  these  two  results: 
(1)  There  is  a  continuous  energy  of  the  Christian  Ideal 
in  history.  We  may  trace  the  positive  continuity  between 
the  Christian  Ideal  which  was  first  given  through  the 
Christ,  and  its  present  light  and  influence  in  Christianity. 
Having  once  entered  into  human  life  in  Jesus  Christ,  it 
has  been  always  with  us,  and  is  a  present  and  living  force 
of  the  Spirit  of  Christ  in  the  world.  (2)  There  has  been 
also  a  progressive  development  of  the  Christian  Ideal  in 
the  Christian  life  and  consciousness.  It  has  not  been  a 
stationary,  or  a  dead,  but  a  living  and  growing  ideal  of 
Christianity.  The  Christ  is  more  and  means  more,  for  the 
world  to-day  than  he  has  ever  before  been  known  by  his 
own  to  be  for  mankind. 

These  two  characteristics  of  continuity  and  progressive- 
ness  belong  to  Christianity  both  in  its  theology  and  in 
its  ethics,  both  in  its  apprehension  of  God,  and  in  its 
understanding  of  duty.  The  dispensation  of  the  Spirit 
alike  in  faith  and  practice  is  a  dispensation  of  life,  and 
growth,  and  movement  towards  some  perfect  truth  and 
good.  We  are  now  prepared  to  resume  the  question  con- 
cerning the  relation  of  the  authority  of  the  Scriptures  to 

1  The  epistle  to  Philemon  might  be  cited  as  an  instructive  example  of 
religious-ethical  proo;ress.  The  new  conception  of  the  relation  of  man  and 
God  in  Christ  — the  theological  truth  underlying  the  epistle  — passes  at  once 
into  an  ethical  application  to  the  relation  of  the  slave  and  the  master.  The 
new  theology  of  Paul  was  the  beginning  of  the  abolition  of  slavery. 


REVELATION    OF   THE    CHKISTIAN    IDEAL  71 

our  Christian  consciousness,  which  needs  to  be  cleared  up 
in  our  ethics  in  order  that  we  may  find,  if  possible,  some 
certain  moral  guidance. 

§  3.      THE    RELATION    OF    SCRIPTURE    AND   FAITH 

What  is  the  relation  between  the  continuous  and  pro- 
gressive Christian  consciousness  and  the  inspired  Scrip- 
tures ?  What  are  we  to  regard  as  the  sufficient  rule  of 
faith  and  practice  ? 

Obviously,  as  already  observed,  we  cannot  admit  two 
independent  rules,  two  final  authorities.  AVe  cannot  hold 
that  both  the  Bible  and  the  Christian  consciousness  are 
courts  of  final  appeal.  Yet  we  have  granted  that  each  has 
truth  and  authority.  To  Avhich  shall  we  go  when  pressed 
to  choose  a  final  ethical  authority  ? 

It  is  an  easy  answer  to  reply  at  once,  and  with  ecclesias- 
tical confidence,  the  Scriptures  alone  are  normative,  the 
Bible  is  the  only  infallible  rule  of  faith  and  practice.  But 
this  answer,  like  most  easy  solutions  of  profound  spiritual 
problems,  needs  to  be  followed  but  a  little  way  before  it 
will  be  seen  to  plunge  into  difficulties,  and  to  lose  itself  in 
hopeless  confusions.  For  (not  to  raise  the  point  that  the 
Bible  has  not  shown  itself  to  be  a  clear,  decisive  infalli- 
bility with  regard  to  many  doctrines  or  duties  concerning 
which  its  most  submissive  readers  have  not  been  able  to 
come  to  an  understanding)  these  questions  are  left  unan- 
swered in  this  ready-made  solution,  —  To  what  is  the 
authority  of  the  Bible  addressed  ?  From  whence  does  it 
receive  its  credentials  ?  Is  its  authority  to  be  regarded  as 
unlimited  over  conscience  ?  Would  a  clear  text  of  Scrip- 
ture be  enough  to  make  right  wrong?  Would  a  plain 
grammatical  rendering  of  some  accredited  word  of  an 
apostle  warrant  us  in  thinking  evil  of  God  ?  In  what 
respects,  if  any,  must  conscience  reserve  to  itself  a  final 
and  supreme  authority?  Moreover,  what  is  the  relation 
of  the  Holy  Ghost  out  of  the  Bible  to  the  Holy  Ghost 
within  the  Bible?  Is  it  a  relation  of  dependence,  or  of 
independent  efficiency  ?  of  entire  subordination,  or  of  free 


72  CHBISTIAN  ETHICS 

co-workinof?  What  is  the  relation  of  the  work  of  the 
Spirit  in  the  Church,  through  which  the  canon  of  Scrip- 
ture was  determined,  to  the  influence  of  the  Spirit  by 
which  the  Scripture  was  inspired? 

'  1.  We  shall  take  a  step  out  of  many  perplexities  of 
belief,  if  Ave  are  willing  to  start  from  a  clear  recognition 
of  the  principle  of  divine  revelation  that  the  Sj)irit  woiks 
in  divers  ways  and  manners. 

The  same  Spirit  may  work  in  the  inspiration  of  the 
Scriptures,  and  in  leading  the  mind  of  the  Church  into 
the  truth.  These  two,  therefore,  the  Christian  Scrip- 
tures and  the  Christian  consciousness  of  man,  are  not 
to  be  held  apart,  or  regarded  as  though  they  were  inde- 
pendent forces  and  factors  of  faith,  one  of  which  must 
be  lowered  in  order  that  the  other  may  be  exalted.  If 
we  isolate  the  Scripture  in  its  authority  from  the  whole 
work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  history,  we  shall  only  succeed 
in  exalting  it  to  a  perilous  supremac}^  We  cannot  take 
God's  special  word  out  of  its  general  relation  to  our 
humanity  without  destroying  its  power.  Whatever  special 
or  unique  authority  Scripture  may  have,  it  cannot  have  it 
apart  from  the  Church  to  which  the  Holy  Ghost  has  been 
given.  The  Scripture  cannot  maintain  its  authority  in 
independence  of  the  whole  work  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ; 
it  cannot  keep  it  as  a  living  law  except  in  vital  relations 
to  the  Christian  mind  of  an  age,  and  all  the  conditions  of 
man's  growth  in  grace  and  knoAvledge.  No  doctrine  of 
sacred  Scripture  can  hope  to  maintain  itself  under  the 
tests  of  critical  studies  und  in  the  light  of  Christian  ethics, 
if  it  fails  to  recognize  this  correlation  of  the  work  of  the 
Spirit  in  the  Bible  with  the  work  of  the  Spirit  in  the  life 
and  growing  consciousness  of  the  Christian  Church. 

2.  We  reject,  therefore,  as  onesided,  and  perilous  alike 
to  faith  in  the  Scriptures  and  to  the  Christian  law  of  con- 
duct, any  view  of  inspiration  which  either  puts  the  Bible 
in  absolute  supremacy  above  conscience,  or,  on  the  other 
hand,  subordinates  entirely  the  Scriptures  to  the  Christian 
consciousness  of  men. 

The  true  relation  between   faith  and  the  Bible  is  not 


REVELATION   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  73 

to  be  found  in  a  hasty  answer,  which  subjects  either 
one  without  qualification  to  the  other.  Rather  we  hold 
that  the  two  are  harmoniously  related,  and  that  we  are 
to  endeavor  to  understand  the  just  province  and  au- 
thority of  each,  and  the  unity  in  which  the  same  Spirit 
works  through  both.  If  it  has  been  the  active  error 
of  Romanism  to  exalt  the  infallibility  of  the  Spirit  in 
the  voice  of  the  Church  above  the  infallibility  of  the 
same  Spirit  in  the  written  word,  it  has  seemed  to  be 
the  passive  error  of  Protestantism,  since  the  Reformation, 
to  forget  too  much  the  interdependence  of  the  written 
Scripture  and  the  living  witness  of  the  Spirit  in  the  mind 
of  the  whole  Church.  Yet  the  two  testimonies  of  the 
Spirit  are  complementary,  and  the  authority  of  the  one 
requires  the  witness  of  the  other.  If  we  separate  these 
two  factors  of  the  spiritual  life  of  man,  we  can  have  no 
sufficient  rule,  and  consequently  no  infallibility.  Further- 
more, neither  of  these  two  is  of  itself  source  of  authority, 
but  only  means  for  the  impartation  and  reception  of  supreme 
truth.  There  is  but  one  original  source  of  authority;  it  is 
the  Truth  itself,  —  the  truth  which  came  by  Christ.  There 
is  only  one  final  and  supreme  authority  in  Christianity, 
either  for  its  theology  or  for  its  ethics,  —  that  is  the  Christ, 
the  mind  of  Christ,  the  Spirit  of  Christ.  The  Holy  Ghost 
is  the  final  authority ;  the  teaching  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is 
the  only  infallible  rule  of  faith  and  practice. 

3.  Hence  the  question  of  authority  in  religion,  when 
reduced  to  its  Christian  simplicity,  is  resolved  into  this 
inquiry,  —  How  is  the  one  teaching  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
imparted  ?  How  is  the  teaching  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ  to 
be  discerned  in  its  doctrinal  and  moral  infallibility  ? 

The  answer  to  this  inquiry  we  may  find,  not  when  we 
separate  Scripture  and  faith,  but  when  we  hold  them  in 
close  correspondence  and  reaction. 

The  Scripture  is  law  to  the  Christian  consciousness,  — 
to  it,  not  independently  of  it.  The  Christian  conscious- 
ness, ^  all  the  knowledge  and  experience,  that  is,  which 
Christianity  has  gained  of  its  Christ,  —  becomes  also  in  its 
turn  law  to  the  Scriptures ;  —  law  of  their  interpretation, 


74  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

of  their  criticism,  of  their  verification,  of  the  selection  and 
completion  of  their  canon.  The  Scripture  is  the  outward, 
fixed,  formal  norm  or  authority  to  faith ;  faith  is  the  veri- 
fication, the  Christian  criticism  and  interpretation  of  the 
Scripture.  The  Scripture  finds  both  reasons  for,  and  limi- 
tations of,  its  authority  in  the  knowledge  and  experience 
which  man  has  of  Christ,  and  the  Spirit  of  Christ.  A 
Scripture  which  should  plainly  and  palpably  deny  the 
Christ  in  the  best,  most  developed,  and  purest  understand- 
ing of  him,  would  thereby  be  judged  to  be  unworthy  of  a 
place  in  a  canonical  Bible.  The  early  Church  would  not 
have  admitted  into  the  canon  any  writing,  though  it  had 
claimed  to  bear  the  signature  of  an  apostle,  if  it  had  been 
found  to  contain  an  evident  contradiction  of  the  whole 
conception  of  the  Christ  which  the  Church  had  gained 
from  all  its  Scriptures,  and  through  the  continuous  witness 
of  the  Spirit  in  the  life  of  believers  from  the  beginning. 
In  other  words,  a  Scripture  must  be  Christian  in  order  to 
be  accepted  as  canonical.  The  two  answer  each  to  the 
other,  the  word  and  the  Spirit,  the  Christ  and  the  faith  of 
his  Church.  Faith  is  as  essential  to  the  searching  and 
testing  of  Scripture,  as  the  Scripture  is  necessary  to  the 
guidance  and  support  of  faith. 

4.  In  this  view  of  the  relation  of  faith  and  Scripture, 
we  are  not  setting  a  human  authority  over  against  a 
divine,  or  subjecting  an  inspired  word  to  an  uninspired 
judgment.  Rather,  we  are  setting  things  spiritual  in  their 
mutual  relations. 

Tliis  view  approaches  more  nearly  the  original  Protes- 
tant conception  of  the  Bible,  as  Martin  Luther  appre- 
hended the  word  of  God  through  his  great  spiritual 
experience  of  justification.  Post-reformation  doctrines  of 
the  inerrant  inspiration  and  unconditioned  authoiity  of  the 
Scriptures  have  not  only  led  the  Church  into  manifold 
critical  perplexities,  but  they  have  departed  from  the 
instinctive  and  wholesome  apprehension  of  the  word  of 
God  which  characterized  the  original  Protestant  faith  in 
the  Bible.  Faith  in  its  ever  fresh  and  living  oneness  with 
Christ  is  the  material  principle  of  the  reformation,  wliile 


REVELATION   OF   THE   CHRISTIAX   IDEAL  7t) 

the  Scripture  is  the  formal  principle  of  it.  Neither  should 
be  separated  from  the  other.  Each  of  these  principles  is 
related  to  and  dej)endent  on  the  other;  faith  finds  its 
objective  rule  in  the  inspired  Scripture,  and  the  Scripture 
finds  its  inward  verification  in  faith.  Each  is  independent 
in  its  own  sphere  and  within  its  own  limits ;  but  neither 
is  made  perfect  except  through  the  other.  The  sole  and 
ultimate  Christian  authority  is  the  Holy  Spirit  whom 
Christ  has  sent.  The  special  and  chosen  outward  means 
of  the  communication  of  the  mind  that  was  in  Jesus  is 
the  testimony  of  the  apostolic  Scriptures ;  the  necessary 
inward  judge  of  what  is  Christian,  —  that  is,  of  what  is  the 
teaching  of  the  Spirit,  —  is  the  common  Christian  con- 
sciousness, or  the  continuous  and  ever-renewed  testimony 
of  the  Church.^ 

5.  This  original  Protestant  conception  of  the  mutual 
dependence  of  the  Scripture  and  faith  is  in  general  accord- 
ance with  the  ideas  of  the  relation  of  the  Bible  and  tradi- 
tion which  may  be  gathered  from  the  early  fathers.  They 
recognized  the  work  of  the  Spirit  in  the  inspiration  of  the 
apostles,  and  also  his  guiding  presence  in  the  continuous 
life  of  Christ's  Church.  We  do  not  find  in  the  early 
Christian  literature  that  arbitrary  and  mechanical  separa- 
tion of  the  two  spheres  of  the  Spirit's  operation,  the  canon 
and  the  Church,  which  has  been  emjDhasized  in  later  Prot- 
estantism. And  the  recovery  of  this  doctrine  of  the  sole 
authority  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ  in  its  divers  ways  and 
manners  of  manifestation,  and  according  to  its  differing 
degrees  of  inspiration,  illumination,  or  impartation  of  spirit- 
ual discernment,  may  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  distinct 
gains  of  modern  theology.     Deliverance  from  an  uncriti- 

1  For  a  thorough  discussion  of  the  original  Protestant  view  of  the  relation 
of  faith  and  Scripture  see  Dorner's  Geschichte  der  prot.  Theologie,  ss.  212-251. 
Modern  Biblical  criticism  is  happily  compelling  us  to  return  from  the  unten- 
able post-reformation  theories  to  the  original  Protestant  standing-ground. 
Dorner's  exposition  of  this  subject  is  worth  careful  study  on  the  part  of  all 
who  would  engage  in  present  discussions  concerning  the  authority  of  the 
Bible.  Dr.  Martineau,  in  his  Seat  of  Authority  in  Religion,  fails  to  grasp  this 
earlier  Protestant  co-ordination  of  Scripture  and  faith.  His  subjectivism  is  to 
be  met  by  a  better  synthesis  of  the  outward  and  the  inward  factors  of  Christian 
certainty. 


76  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

cal,  and  even  superstitious  veneration  for  the  letter  of 
Scripture,  and  a  larger  faith  in  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the 
Church  and  in  the  Christian  renewals  of  the  thoughts  of  men, 
as  well  as  belief  in  the  special  work  of  the  Spirit  in  the  in- 
spiration of  the  sacred  Scriptures,  are  essential  alike  to  the 
maintenance  of  the  normative  authority  of  tlie  Bible  and 
to  the  preservation  of  Christian  life.  Should  Christian 
ethics  be  held  to  post-reformation  doctrines  of  the  inspira- 
tion and  inerrancy  of  the  Scriptures,  it  would  prove  a  dif- 
ficult task,  through  such  literal  subjection  to  the  Scripture, 
to  bring  the  moral  problems  of  modern  society  under  the 
law  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ.  Christian  ethics  must  apply 
truth  to  life  in  the  freedom  of  the  Spirit,,  yet  in  honest  and 
loyal  dependence  on  the  apostolic  testimony  to  the  teach- 
ings of  Christ. 

III.    SIGNIFICAXCE  FOR  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS  OF   THE 

PROGRESSIVE  MANIFESTATION  OF  THE 

MORAL  IDEAL 

The  conception  which  we  have  gained  of  the  continuous 
and  progressive  unfolding  of  the  Christian  Ideal  in  human 
consciousness,  puts  ethics  into  right  relation  to  history. 

1.  We  are  enabled  by  means  of  this  conception  to  dis- 
tinguish better  between  a  false  and  the  true  conservatism. 

Since  the  ideal  is  still  in  the  process  of  revelation,  and 
will  continue  to  manifest  itself  in  larger  and  higher  reali- 
zations of  good  until  the  end  of  this  world-age,  it  is  folly 
to  wish  to  brinof  back  the  moral  standards  or  conditions 
of  any  past  age.  History  has  increasing  worth  as  a  con- 
tinuous work  of  the  Spirit.  The  stream  may  not  rise 
above  the  fountain;  but  it  would  be  absurd  to  suppose 
that  the  river  a  hundred  miles  down  its  course  could  be 
poured  back  into  the  brooks  from  which  it  has  flowed. 
Equally  foolish  would  it  be  to  think  of  putting  present  and 
increasingly  complex  social  conditions  back  into  some 
primitive  simplicity.  To  restore  an  early  form  of  Chris- 
tianity would  not  be  to  make  progress  in  the  realization  of 
the   Christian  Ideal.      Reversion  is  not  conservatism.     A 


KEVELATION   OF    THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  77 

Christian  etliic  for  tlie  variegated  conditions  of  modern 
society  could  not  be  reduced  to  the  Pcedagogiis  of  Clement 
of  Alexandria,  or  the  Siimma  of  the  great  medioeval  doc- 
tor. As  apostolic  Christianity  could  not  be  compressed 
into  Judaism,  or  kept  to  the  one  type  of  the  first  Jewish- 
Christian  worship  in  the  temple ;  as  the  apostle  to  the 
Gentiles  reached  a  broader  application  of  the  gospel  to  the 
world  than  St.  James  had  found  necessary  for  the  dis- 
ciples in  Jerusalem ;  so  Christian  manners  and  morals  in 
our  age  cannot  be  reduced  to  the  pattern  of  former  days, 
or  measured  by  the  rules  of  any  earlier  social  conditions. 
The  dream  of  restoring  piimitive  Christianity  either  in 
faith  or  morals  is  impracticable  not  merely  because  our 
theories  of  life  have  changed,  but  also,  as  Mr.  Green  has 
observed,!  because  the  facts  of  life  have  changed.  New 
social  conditions  confront  our  Christianity.  New  indus- 
trial problems  are  forced  upon  our  ethics.  The  exten- 
sively ramified  and  fruitful  tree  of  modern  life  cannot  by 
any  social  magic  be  reduced  to  its  primitive  root,  or  be 
caused  to  revert  suddenly  into  its  earlier  and  simpler 
shoots.  We  shall  have  occasion  all  the  way  through 
our  practical  ethics  to  notice  and  to  avoid  that  false 
and  impracticable  conservatism  which  would  restore  ante- 
cedent forms  rather  than  develop  richer  life. 

Two  illustrations  may  suffice  at  this  point  to  indicate 
the  insufficiency  of  this  method  of  moral  restoration. 
Some  years  since  a  book^  was  written  in  England  to  show 
that  a  person  who  should  take  the  precepts  of  the  gospels 
literally  and  seek  to  apply  them  with  conscientious  exact- 
ness to  present  conditions  of  life,  would  fall  successively 
under  the  condemnation  of  all  the  parties  and  powers  of 
modern  thought  and  society,  and  finally  be  rejected  even 
by  the  people  for  whom  he  would  live  and  must  die. 
Without  denying  the  clever  satire  which  such  a  picture  of 
an  imagined  literal  Christian  life  presented,  we  do  not  hesi- 
tate to  say  that  a  character  so  conceived  must  fail  because 
it  ought  to  fail ;  that  its  idea  of  Christianity  is  a  misappre- 
hension of  the  progressive  revelation  of  the  Christian  Ideal; 

1  Proleyomena,  p.  278.  2  Joshua  Davidscn. 


78  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

and  that  consequently  in  its  moral  endeavor  it  falls  to  the 
ground  because  of  the  error  which  it  carries  in  it.  For  in 
consistency  with  the  truth  of  the  continuous  work  and 
teaching  of  the  Holy  Spirit  we  may  not  suppose  that  the 
Son  of  man  himself  would  live  to-day  in  England  or  in 
the  United  States,  or  in  Japan,  precisely  as  he  dwelt  of 
old  in  Judea  and  Galilee.  We  must  believe  rather  that 
he  who  knew  what  is  in  man  would  form  his  life  in  con- 
stant spiritual  adaptation  to  the  conditions  and  the  tasks 
of  any  age  or  people  ;  that  while  in  his  love  and  truth 
the  Christ  is  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever,  he 
would  fit  his  manner  of  life  and  apply  his  doctrine  to  the 
social,  moral,  and  religious  requirements  of  every  age  with 
as  much  wisdom  as  he  displayed  while  he  walked  among 
the  people  in  Judea  of  old,  or  answered  the  questions  of 
the  scribes  and  Pharisees  of  his  day.  The  Christ  comes 
always  to  fulfil  not  to  destroy;  and  Christian  faith  and 
ethics  are  the  fulfilments  of  spiritual  processes  of  life.  We 
have  a  more  difficult  task  to  perform  than  simply  to  strive 
to  repeat  the  beliefs  or  the  manners  even  of  primitive 
Christianity ;  the  harder,  more  manifold  and  only  Chris- 
tian task  is  to  organize  present  life  in  all  its  spheres  of 
industry  and  thought  in  the  spirit  of  the  Christ.  That 
task  can  be  accomplished  by  no  restoration  of  the  Jeru- 
salem that  was,  but  by  the  coming  of  the  Jerusalem 
which  is  above. ^ 

The  other  illustration  of  false  conservatism  is  to  be 
found  in  the  thought  of  securing  the  unity  of  the  Church 
through  reversal  to  the  ecclesiastical  type  of  the  first 
centuries.  Although  we  admit  that  much  Church  history 
since  the  earlier  ecumenical  councils  has  been  a  departure 
from  the  simplicity  of  Christ  rather  than  a  true  develop- 
ment of  Christianity,  nevertheless  it  contradicts  the  law 
of  the  continuous,  progressive  revelation  of  the  Christian 

1  In  this  sense  the  striking  remark  of  Schnltz,  is  to  he  understood:  "Jesus 
can  ho  our  model  only  for  the  disposition  in  which  we  have  to  carry  through 
our  calling  with  its  limitations  and  sacrifices.  He  is  not  model  and  example, 
but  original  and  ideal  of  the  Christian  morality.  Not  to  copy  after  him,  but 
to  let  his  life  take  form  in  us,  to  receive  his  Spirit,  and  to  make  it  effective, 
is  the  moral  task  of  the  Christian."  —  Grundriss  der  Evany.  Ethik,  s.  5. 


PwEVELATION   OF  THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  79 

ideal,  to  suppose  for  a  moment  that  the  future  good  can 
be  found  in  any  past.  The  unity  of  the  Church  cannot 
be  reached  through  Christian  reversion  to  some  earlier 
type ;  it  is  to  be  gained,  if  at  all,  as  the  result  of  further 
spiritual  growth ;  it  is  to  be  won  as  another  victory  of  the 
Spirit.  That  such  unity  may  yet  prove  possible,  and  that 
we  should  dream  of  it  and  long  for  it,  we  would  not  ques- 
tion :  but  the  way  to  the  kingdom  lies  before  us,  and  its 
promise  is  to  be  greeted  by  faith ;  ^  it  is  not  to  be  obtained 
by  looking  and  longing  for  a  vanishing  past.  Such  future 
unity  will  be  truly  conservative  of  all  the  fruits  of  the 
Spirit  which  have  been  ripening  on  the  separate  branches 
of  Christ's  true  vine.  It  will  be,  Avhen  it  comes,  a  unity 
of  Christian  comprehension  and  fulfilment. 

The  truly  conservative  mind  Avill  go  back  into  the  past 
and  sight,  as  it  were,  over  its  chief  events,  along  its  great 
epochs,  in  order  that  it  may  mark  the  line  of  historic 
progress,  which  runs  on  into  the  future.  The  worth  in 
this  respect  of  the  past,  and  especially  of  the  world's 
Christian  ages  past,  consists  in  their  prophetic  significance. 
We  discover  from  history  the  direction  in  which  the  Spirit, 
who  ever  goes  before  the  Church,  has  been  moving,  and  on 
w^hat  lines  we  are  to  expect  to  be  led  forward.  Take  any 
one  of  our  advanced  moral  ideas,  as  the  idea  of  toleration, 
or  liberty,  or  social  obligation,  or  human  brotherhood,  and 
trace  through  the  past  the  historic  course  of  that  moral 
idea,  and  thereby  we  shall  be  enabled  to  estimate  more 
intelligently  the  worth  of  it  in  relation  to  other  truths 
and  factors,  and  also  to  apply  it  more  confidently  to 
present  movements,  and  to  predict  the  further  course 
of  its  empire  among  men.  True  conservatism,  in  short, 
is  progress  which  takes  direction  from  the  past  and  fulfils 
its  good ;  false  conservatism  is  a  narrowing  and  hopeless 
reversion  to  the  past,  which  is  a  betrayal  of  the  promise  of 
the  future.^ 

2.    This  principle  of  the  continuity  and  progress  of  the 

1  Heb.  xi.  13. 

2  The  ethical  law  of  progress,  both  in  relation  to  the  past  and  the  future, 
is  given  in  the  third  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippiaus. 


80  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

realization  of  the  highest  good,  or  Christian  Ideal,  gives 
value  to  our  hope. 

"  The  idea  of  development,"  as  Mr.  Mackenzie  has  well 
said,^  "  has  made  it  scientific  to  hope,  by  exhibiting  life 
not  as  a  mere  process  of  perpetual  change,  but  as  a  growth 
towards  a  definite  goal."  The  ethical  motive  of  hope  has 
secure  root  in  this  law  of  progress  through  Christian  history 
towards  a  divinely  intended  goal.  Christianity  is  preemi- 
nently the  expectant  religion.  The  Church  could  not  be 
the  church  militant  were  it  not  the  church  expectant. 
Christian  ethics  is  the  hopeful  science.  It  is  optimistic 
not  because  it  fails  to  see  the  evil  of  the  present  world, 
or  to  fathom  the  sinfulness  of  sin,  but  because  it  is  ideal- 
istic ;  and  even  this  world-history  of  sin,  since  it  is  also  a 
history  of  redemption,  follows  a  course  of  Christian  ideali- 
zation, which  shall  be  continuous  and  progressive  until  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  shall  come.^ 

3.  We  may  observe  the  contrast  at  this  point  between 
Herbert  Spencer's  outlook  from  the  conclusions  of  evolu- 
tionary science,  and  the  prospect  which  is  opened  by  the 
prophecy  of  Christianity.  His  ethics,  because  evolutionary, 
cannot  avoid  a  tone  of  ultimate  optimism.  One  who  be- 
lieves in  the  evolution  of  the  creation  can  hardly  help 
holding  to  its  growing  good,  and  hoping  for  its  ultimate 
best.  Nevertheless  a  dark  prospect  of  universal  equilib- 
rium, which  is  equivalent  to  universal  death,  stares  our 
evolutionist  in  the  face.  "  Alternate  eras  of  Evolution 
and  Dissolution"  are  suggested  by  the  argument.  Herbert 
Spencer,  however,  in  reply  to  the  seeming  inference  of  the 
ultimate  reign  of  ''Universal  Death"  from  his  evolutionary 
premises,  deems  it  ''  legitimate  to  point  out  how,  on  carry- 
ing the  argument  still  further,  we  are  led  to  infer  a  subse- 
quent Universal  Life."  ^ 

But  the  principle  of  spiritual  continuity  and  develop- 
ment, which,  as  we  have  seen,  lies  at  the  basis  of  Christian 

1  Introddction  to  Social  Philosophy,  p.  124. 

2  Notice  in  this  connection  the  ethicfii  idealism  of  St.  eTolin's  epistles.  He 
regards  life  and  death  not  merely  in  their  present  conlusious..  but  in  their 
clear,  worked-out  results. 

3  First  Principles,  p.  483. 


EEVELATIOX    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  81 

ethics,  and  which  runs  all  through  the  Christian  interpre- 
tation of  history,  forbids  the  thought  of  such  aimless  alter- 
nation of  life  and  death.  For  spiritual  gains  are  permanent 
gains;  what  is  acquired  by  the  Spirit  is  acquired  in  eternity. 
It  belongs  to  an  order  of  being  which  is  not  held  in  subjec- 
tion to  physical  change.  Sin  may  break  into  this  spiritual 
order  and  drag  it  down  to  the  plain  of  mortality  and  cor- 
ruption ;  but  except  through  the  moral  death  of  sin  there 
is  no  natural  return  of  Spirit  to  chaos  and  primeval  night. 
There  is  no  reversion  of  the  spiritual  order  through  its 
own  processes  to  the  natural  order.  Life  born  of  the 
Spirit  is  life  born  into  the  eternal.  Spiritual  life  is  by 
its  own  nature  persistent  force,  in  itself  undecaying  and 
independent  of  the  outward  processes  of  corruption.  Such, 
at  least,  is  the  immortal  assurance,  which  the  true, 
the  eternal  kind  of  life,  so  far  as  we  have  any  present 
experience  of  it,  seems  to  contain  wdthin  itself,  and  to 
assert  with  all  the  positiveness  of  self-conscious  worth  and 
love  against  the  appearance  of  death  and  our  subjection  to 
it.  Spiritual  life  and  love  are  to  themselves  immortal. 
The  more  thoroughly  spiritualized  one's  life  becomes,  the 
stronger  grows  the  inward  conviction  of  immortality.  No 
outward  proof,  nor  visible  miracle,  can  make  a  soul  sure  of 
itself,  and  of  its  deathless  worth,  if  it  is  not  sure  within 
itself  of  its  spiritual  being.  If  pressed  for  the  proof  of 
this  prospect  of  ethical  and  spiritual  immortality,  of  the 
final  reign  of  true  life  over  all  death,  we  may  find  much 
in  the  analogies  of  nature  to  help  us,  and  a  historic  foun- 
dation also  for  faith  is  given  in  the  supernal  life  and 
glorious  resurrection  of  Jesus ;  but  the  ultimate  resort  of 
the  argument,  and  the  first  and  last  word  of  our  faith  in 
immortality  will  be  found  in  the  spiritual  life  of  man;  — 
this  great  faith  will  have  power  with  us  in  proportion  to  our 
personal  sense  of  the  spiritual  worth  of  our  self-conscious 
life,  and  our  super-temporal  and  super-sensible  being.  In- 
deed the  outward  historic  evidences  of  tJie  Christian  reve- 
lation, the  witness  to  the  supernatural  life  of  Christ,  and 
his  poAver  over  death  in  his  resurrection,  need  to  be 
read,  not  merely  in  the  light  of  historical  criticism,  but 


S$tS 


82  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

also  in  the  light  of  their  ethical  contents  and  revelation,  in 
order  that  they  may  be  estimated  at  their  true  value,  and 
understood  in  their  higher  naturalness  —  their  harmony, 
that  is,  with  the  whole  nature  of  the  universe  and  its 
spiritual  laws. 

From  this  ethical-spiritual  point  of  view,  and  in  affirma- 
tion of  the  principle  of  the  spiritual  continuity  and  pro- 
gressive realization  of  the  supreme  moral  good  in  the 
spiritual  world,  we  gain  prophetic  outlook  towards  a  land 
of  promise  in  which  there  shall  be  no  more  death,  and  the 
living  God  shall  be  all  and  in  all. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  CONTENTS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL 

Having  thus  surveyed  the  processes  through  which 
the  Christian  Ideal  is  communicated  and  known,  we  turn 
next  to  a  determination  of  the  contents  of  the  supreme 
good,  so  far  as  it  has  yet  been  realized  or  exists  in  any 
possible  prophetic  anticipation  of  it  before  the  eye  of 
Christian  faith. ^ 

The  contents  of  the  Christian  Ideal  are  in  general 
the  good  which  it  is  Christian  to  desire  as  the  supreme 
end  of  life.  Every  moral  act  implies  a  reference  of  con- 
duct to  some  end  to  be  desired  or  gained.  Every  moral 
state,  in  distinction  from  a  condition  which  has  no  moral 
character,  implies  that  something  has  been  chosen  as  a 
good  or  end  of  being.  The  first  and  perpetual  question 
of  moral  philosophy  is:  What  is  this  supreme  good? 
How  is  this  moral  end  to  be  determined  and  delined? 
One's  idea  of  the  good,  whatever  it  may  be,  will  be  the 
morally  dominating  idea  of  his  life. 

The  end  of  human  existence  has  been  regarded  by  many 
moralists  as  pleasure  ;  and  the  pleasure  which  is  to  be 
desired  as  the  supreme  end  of  life  has  been  further  rare- 
fied, purified,  and  exalted,  until  a  very  moral  kind  of 
pleasure  has  been  obtained  from  the  distillation  of  utili- 
tarian ethics, — a  pleasure  which  becomes  palatable  and 
stimulating  to  a  healthful  moral  taste.  The  end  of  exist- 
ence is  pleasure,  yet,  it  is  added,  not  separate  and  isolated 
pleasure.  The  moral  object  of  life  is  amplified  and  ex- 
alted into  the  greatest  good  for  the  greatest  number,  or 

1  While  Mr.  Green,  Prolegomena,  p.  204,  rio^htly  insists  that  the  imconditional 
good  cannot  be  defined  because  we  cannot  know  our  capabilities  until  they  are 
realized,  yet  so  far  as  the  good  has  been  realized,  it  is  known,  and  partial 
knowledge  is  true  knowledge. 

83 


84  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

the  largest  attainable  or  conceivable  human  pleasure. 
When  the  idea  of  pleasure  is  thus  socialized  and  human- 
ized, happiness  as  an  ethical  good  assumes  at  once  nobler 
proportions.  The  moral  is  identified  with  the  useful, 
but  the  standard  of  usefulness  is  not  to  be  narrowly  con- 
ceived, or  limited  to  individual  calculation,  or  to  private 
happiness ;  it  is  to  be  elevated  into  a  standard  of  univer- 
sal welfare,  and  this  general  human  utility  is  to  be  meas- 
ured and  determined  not  by  the  short  rule  of  any  individual 
life,  but  by  the  prolonged  experience  of  mankind. 

When  the  methods  of  evolutionary  science  are  employed 
by  utilitarian  moral  science,  it  becomes  possible  to  give  a 
still  ampler  and  more  plausible  form  to  the  empirical 
determination  of  the  idea  of  the  summum  honum^  or  the 
happiness  which  is  morally  desirable.  The  good  for  any 
form  of  life  is  the  realization  of  its  type  in  adaptation 
to  its  environment.  Increasing  good  for  being  as  a  whole 
consists  in  the  development  of  the  inner  organic  forces, 
their  increasing  specialization,  in  harmony  with  the  out- 
ward conditions  or  environment  of  life.  In  other  words, 
life,  as  it  advances  on  the  earth,  becomes  richer  in  special- 
ized forms,  and  better  adaptations  to  its  environment. 
The  sum  of  these  specialized  adaptations  is  at  any  time 
the  index  of  the  amount  of  good  which  living  being  has 
attained.  Man  is  the  highest  animal,  the  most  richly 
specialized  organic  form  of  being  on  earth,  having  in  him- 
self manifold  and  wonderful  powers  of  self-adaptation  to 
the  world  without  him ;  his  good  is  to  be  realized,  in 
conformity  to  his  type,  through  the  acquisition  of  the 
fullest  and  most  harmonious  life  which  is  possible  to  a 
being  so  highly  organized.  There  may  be  other  worlds, 
it  will  be  granted,  where  still  higher  organization  and 
greater  consequent  good  may  be  possible  than  our  posi- 
tive science  of  man  can  conceive ;  but  such  future  possible 
development  and  still  more  spiritualized  powers  of  being, 
though  they  may  be  matters  of  faith  or  dreams  of  hope, 
do  not  yet  enter,  it  is  said,  into  any  experience  which 
we  have  of  known  utilities,  and  must  be  excluded  therefore 
from  any  scientific  formula  for  man's  highest  good. 


CONTEXTS    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDExVL  85 

Empirical  (in  distinction  from  transcendental)  ethics, 
by  the  enrichment  of  utilitarianism  through  evolutionary 
methods,  is  thus  enabled  to  escape  from  the  narrow  limita- 
tions of  mere  hedonism,  or  the  simple  ethics  of  pleasure, 
and  to  define  the  summum  bonum^  with  moral  largeness  of 
yiew,  as  the  development  of  the  whole  life  of  humanity  in 
harmony  with  its  environment;  as  the  greatest  possible 
social  efficiency;  or  as  the  realization  of  the  powers  and 
capacities  of  the  type  or  idea  of  the  human  organism.  In 
all  such  utilitarian  determinations  of  the  good  we  must 
recognize  a  relative  truth.  It  is  an  ethical  gain  which  we 
owe  to  the  naturalistic  ethics  of  our  day  that  we  are  able 
to  trace  farther,  and  to  see  much  more  clearly,  the  coin- 
cidence between  the  right  and  the  useful  in  the  moral 
world.  But  coincidence  is  not  necessarily  identity;  and 
the  fact  that  honesty  is  good  policy  does  not  prove  that 
good  policy  is  honesty.  As  the  laws  of  beauty  and  the 
laws  of  utility  are  found  to  have  many  interesting  corre- 
spondences in  natural  history ;  as  a  seeming  principle  of 
economy  in  nature  uses  for  the  protection  of  birds  and  the 
increase  of  the  flowers  the  same  processes  of  selection  and 
adaptation  which  secure  also  the  adornment  of  their  plu- 
mage and  the  variegation  of  their  hues  ;  so  one  and  the 
same  principle  in  moral  history  may  issue  in  results  which 
are  at  the  same  time  useful  and  morally  pleasing,  and  pro- 
duce from  the  same  spiritual  process  both  the  utilities  and 
the  excellencies  of  the  moral  world.  Certainly  the  good 
proves  to  be  in  the  end,  on  the  large  scale,  the  humanly 
useful.  Transcendental  ethics,  the  ethics  of  the  higher 
law,  does  not  escape  the  necessity  of  proving  and  filling 
out  its  abstract  conceptions  of  moral  good  by  means  of  the 
science  of  moral  utilities.  The  useful  is  a  measuring  rod 
for  the  ethical.  Indeed  we  cannot  understand  the  relig- 
ious ethics  of  the  Old  Testament,  if  we  do  not  allow  room 
and  need  for  utilitarian  measures  in  the  providential  moral 
ordering  of  the  world.  The  God  of  the  Old  Testament 
proceeded  often  as  a  utilitarian  teacher  of  morals  in  Israel. 
That  which  in  different  ages  was  morally  possible,  which 
was  morally  adapted  to  further  progress,  was  permitted  in 


86  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

the  law  and  made  known  to  the  prophets.  What  heavenly 
light  can  shine  down  between  the  clouds  or  through  them, 
is  suffered  to  fall  upon  the  earth ;  and  the  moral  world  of 
old  was  not  left  in  utter  darkness  because  the  whole  tran- 
scendentalism of  heaven  could  not  in  the  early  ages  be 
poured  into  the  bright  noon  of  Christianity.  The  princi- 
ple of  moral  adaptation,  or  accommodation  in  revelation,  is 
utilitarianism  in  the  divine  ethics ;  and  we  cannot  refuse 
to  admit  this  principle  of  relative  right  in  Christian  ethics 
without  rejecting  some  of  the  evident  indications  of  the 
patience  of  the  God  of  Israel  in  the  moral  education  of 
the  race. 

Moreover,  evolutionary,  utilitarian  conceptions  of  the 
morally  good  approach  very  closely  at  one  point  to  the 
highest  transcendental  idea  of  the  supreme  good.  For 
scientific  ethics  finds  life  itself  to  be  a  good ;  it  is  desirable 
to  be  born.  Any  being,  according  to  the  possibilities  of 
its  type,  is  well-being ;  and  for  man  especially  life  accord- 
ing to  the  capacities  of  a  man  is  good,  is  moral  well-being. 
That  is  moral  which  tends  at  any  time  to  preserve  the  life 
of  man  in  its  largest  capacity  and  efiiciency.  This  last 
teaching  of  evolutionary  ethics  draws  very  near  that  idea 
of  his  kingdom  on  earth  which  Christ  declared  when  he 
said,  *'  I  came  that  they  may  have  life,  and  may  have  it 
abundantly."  ^ 

We  have  already  indicated  ^  reasons  for  our  dissent  from 
the  utilitarian  analysis  of  conscience,  and  its  reduction  of 
the  moral  worth  of  life  to  terms  of  pleasure.  All  such 
accounts  of  man's  moral  being  and  growth,  we  hold, 
either  unconsciously  assume  at  the  beginning,  or  dexter- 
ously suffer  to  slip  in  somewhere  into  the  process  from 
which  conscience  emerges,  the  distinctive  moral  elements 
which  we  find  differentiated  from  all  others  at  the  end  of 
the  evolution.^     We  recognize  throughout  the  ethical  evo- 

1  John  X.  10.  2  pp.  33_43. 

3  Herbert  Spencer,  Data  of  Ethics,  p.  46.,  asserts  that  "  no  school  can  avoid 
taking  for  the  nltimate  moral  aim  a  desirable  state  of  feeling,  called  by  what- 
ever name, —gratification,  enjoyment,  happiness."  He  says  also,  that  pleas- 
ure "is  as  mnch  a  necessary  form  of  moral  intnition  as  space  is  a  necessary 
form  of  intellectual  intuition."     We  may  admit  the  latter  statement,  and 


CONTENTS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  87 

lution  a  transcendental  fact  —  a  potency  and  promise  in 
man  which  is  moral,  spiritual,  of  God ;  and  this  unfolding 
life  and  consciousness  issues  in  a  sense  of  righteousness, 
and  the  obligation  of  our  being  to  the  right,  which  cannot 
be  resolved  into  anything  other  than  itself,  and  which 
justifies  itself  in  its  effects  of  harmonious  happy  life. 

We  w^elcome  the  contributions  of  modern  naturalistic 
ethics,  so  far  as  they  serve  to  mark  definite  standards  of 
duty  and  to  enrich  with  specialized  determinations  of  good 
the  contents  of  our  distinctive  and  inalienable  idea  of 
right.  But  we  have  assumed  from  philosophic  ethics  as  a 
fundamental  postulate  the  truth  that  there  is  something 
which  man  may  know  and  obey  as  of  absolute  moral 
worth ;  that  there  is  a  supreme  good  wdiich  is  not  pleas- 
ure, although  its  realization  is  pleasurable ;  which  cannot  be 
reduced  to  a  catalogue  of  calculations  of  utilities,  although 
it  also  serves  a  principle  of  utility ;  and  that  this  moral 
worth  in  its  commanding  authority,  and  its  determined 
contents  of  righteousness,  constitutes  the  end  or  supreme 
good  of  man's  being. 

The  idea  of  the  highest  good  has  been  the  crucial  test  of  philosophic 
ethics.  It  may  be  helpful  to  the  student  to  append  a  condensed  statement 
of  the  different  definitions  which  have  been  given  of  it  by  German  philoso- 
phers, with  references  to  the  pages  in  JodPs  Ethik,  vol.  ii.,  which  I  have 
used  in  tabulating  these  philosophic  ideas  of  the  good,  and  where  they  will 
be  found  carefully  discussed. 

Kant. — The  proper  object  of  the  moral  estimation  of  worth  is  the 
good  will ;  good  in  itself  not  through  what  it  works  or  effects,  not  through 
its  usefulness  or  attainment  of  any  end  which  is  put  before  it,  but  good 
only  through  the  willing,  i.e.  in  itself  good.  The  good  will  is  determined 
only  by  the  idea  of  the  moral  law  and  pure  reverence  for  it  (p.  14). 

Schiller. — The  beautiful  soul — the  beautiful  morality.  Reason  tyid 
sensibility,  duty  and  inclination  coincide  (p.  52). 

Fichte. — The  last  aim  of  the  individual  is  perfect  reconciliation  with 
himself  and  perfect  freedom  from  all  inclinations  which  do  not  lie  in  the 
tendency  of  a  reasonable  self-lawgiving.  This  is  likewise  the  goal  of 
society,  the  completed  reign  of  reason  (p.  75).  The  end  is  not  happiness, 
but  the  absolute  self-contentment  of  the  reason,  the  entire  freedom  from 


apply  it  against  the  reduction  of  the  moral  intuition  to  pleasure.  Pleasure 
may  be  the  /o?-m,  but  it  is  not  the  substance  of  the  moral  intuition.  We 
charge  that  utilitarianism  makes  unwittingly  this  mistake  of  confusing  ethi- 
cal form  with  ethical  substance.  It  confuses  the  formal  and  material  princi- 
ples of  the  moral  judgment. 


88  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

all  dependence,  which  is  the  essence  of  the  moral  (p.  83).  The  end 
to  be  attained  is  no  enjoyment,  but  the  affirmation  of  the  worth  which 
belongs  to  the  reason  (p.  80). 

Krause.  — The  good  is  the  essence  (Wesentliche)  of  life  to  be  formed 
in  time,  the  peculiar,  self-living  determination  of  a  being.  Knowledge  of 
this  good  is  not  possible  without  knowledge  of  the  being  of  God  in  which 
all  finite  beings  are  contained.  Ethics  is  a  subordinate  part  of  the  general 
science  of  being  —  the  science  of  God.  Goodness  is  to  do  what  is  essential 
to  life.  God  is  the  one  good,  the  highest  good,  the  original  idea  of  the  end 
which  the  moral  man  in  a  finite  way  imitates  in  himself  (p.  94) . 

Hegel.  —  The  realization  of  will  as  free  intelligence  (p.  108).  The  rec- 
onciliation of  God  with  himself  and  with  nature  (p.  15o). 

Schelling.  —  The  removal  of  the  dualism  between  being  and  thinking, 
nature  and  spirit  (p.  145). 

Schleiermacher.  —  The  naturalizing  of  reason  and  the  rationalizing  of 
nature.  The  mutual  fashioning  {Lieinanderhildens)  of  nature  and  rea- 
son. The  highest  good  is  the  organic  connection  or  summation  of  all 
goods  ;  consequently  the  whole  moral  being  is  to  be  brought  under  the 
conception  of  the  highest  good  (p.  173). 

Herbart.  —  Good  and  evil  are  not  conceptions  of  knowledge,  but  of  the 
estimation  of  worth  ;  not  predicates  of  existence,  so  far  as  it  is,  but  of 
the  manner  in  which  a  possible  or  real  object  will  be  apprehended  by  a 
spectator  standing  opposite  it  (p.  199) . 

We  have  claimed  above  that  we  must  recognize  this  rational  element, 
which  all  these  definitions  grasp  after,  as  an  original,  simple  element  of 
the  good  ;  but  the  transcendental  ethical  element  is  to  be  filled  with  con- 
tents, the  good  to  be  differentiated  into  the  goods  of  life,  through  experi- 
mental ethics,  or  the  wisdom  of  the  moral  utilities. 

The  task  next  awaiting  us  is  to  bring  this  general  con- 
ception of  the  supreme  good  to  further  interpretation  in 
the  light  of  the  Christian  revelation.  We  have  further 
to  define  what  the  chief  end  of  life  is,  and  to  describe  the 
realizable  contents  of  the  moral  ideal,  in  the  light  of  the 
revelation  of  God,  who  is  the  Good,  which  is  given  us 
through  Jesus  Christ.  Christian  ethics,  in  a  word,  has 
before  it  the  task  of  Christianizing  the  idea  of  the  summum 
bonum,  the  supreme  good. 


I.   THE  BIBLICAL  DOCTRINE  OF  THE  HIGHEST  GOOD 

§  1.      THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    CONCEPTION   OF    THE    SUPREME    GOOD 

It  is  marked  by  its  social  rather  than  individualistic 
character.  The  individual  Hebrew  has  no  conception  of 
salvation  apart  from  the  blessing  of  the  people  of  Israel. 


CONTENTS    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  89 

The  psalmist  prefers  Jerusalem  above  his  chief  joy.^  This 
social  conception  of  well-being  among  the  Hebrews  appears 
in  the  early  prominence  which  was  given  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment to  God's  promise  to  the  family,  and  the  hope  of  a 
family  name  and  inheritance  forever.  The  family  life  and 
its  blessing  came  first  in  the  divine  order  of  salvation.^ 
Moreover,  the  family  hope  and  blessing  are  to  be  realized 
in  the  covenant  of  God  with  Israel  and  the  consequent 
prosperity  of  the  nation.  The  original  promise  to  Abra- 
ham was  the  promise  of  a  blessing  through  his  seed  to  all 
the  nations  of  the  earth;  not  to  individuals,  but  to  the 
peoples  of  the  earth.  The  conception  arises,  and  takes 
permanent  form,  of  a  holy  people.  A  people  chosen  of 
God  is  to  enter  in  and  possess  the  land  of  promise.  Indi- 
viduals are  not  to  seize  the  promise  with  solitary  hands, 
and  to  keep  it  as  their  private  possession  ;  but  the  people 
of  God,  keeping  His  covenant  and  walking  before  Him  in 
truth,  are  to  inherit  the  blessing  which  the  Lord  their  God 
shall  give  them.  The  supreme  good  in  Israel  is  to  be  a 
national  good. 

So  when  the  prophets  with  their  more  ethical  concep- 
tion of  religion,  begin  to  think  of  God  as  a  father,  they 
regard  Israel  collectively  as  His  son;  the  divine  Father- 
hood, so  far  as  it  is  conceived  of  in  the  prophetic  litera- 
ture, is  His  fatherhood  over  Israel.^  In  a  twofold  sense 
Israel  is  called  God's  son ;  God  is  his  creator,  and  the 
Lord  has  made  Israel  the  special  object  of  His  choice  and 
care.  So  David  the  king,  as  representing  the  nation,  is 
called  a  son  of  God.^  The  remnant  at  least  of  the  people 
is  destined  to  perpetuate  the  true  Israel  as  the  object  of 
God's  choice.  In  the  religious  service  of  the  temple, 
and  in  the  hope  of  the  blessing  of  the  covenant,  the  indi- 
vidual Israelite  is  never  separated  from  the  organic  whole 
of  Israel ;  the  welfare  of  the  just  will  be  his  participation 
in  the  prosperity  of  the  people  of  the  Lord.  The  good 
which  all  the  children  of  the  promise  are  to  pray  for,  and 

1  Ps.  cxxxvii.  6. 

2  Morality  of  the  Old  Testament,  Smyth,  p.  42. 

3  Ex.  iv.  22,  23  ;  Deut.  xxxii.  6,  IS ;  Is.  Ixiii.  IG  ;  Hosea  xi.  1. 

4  Ps.  Ixxxix.  26-27  ;  2  Sam.  vii.  14. 


90  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

to  desire  above  their  chief  joy,  is  the  restoration  of  Jeru- 
salem and  the  return  of  the  ransomed  of  the  Lord  Avith 
singing  to  Zion. 

This  social  conception  of  the  supreme  good  marks  the 
-whole  prophetic  doctrine  of  election.  It  is  not  the  soli- 
tary individual  soul,  but  Israel  who  is  the  elect  servant  of 
God.  "  Yet  now  hear,  O  Jacob,  my  servant ;  and  Israel 
whom  I  have  chosen."  ^  The  grand  idea  of  a  people  elected 
for  the  service  of  God  inspired  the  prophets  of  old.  Elec- 
tion is  national  rather  than  individual ;  for  service  rather 
than  for  happiness.  The  law  of  service  for  social  good, 
and  ultimately  for  the  blessing  of  all  nations,  is  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  divine  election  according  to  the  Old  Testa- 
ment prophets.  Tliis  is  certainly  a  larger  and  nobler 
conception  of  election  than  the  intensely  individualistic 
conception  of  it  with  which  our  Protestant  theology  has 
made  us  familiar.  No  man,  according  to  the  Old  Testa- 
ment doctrine  of  election,  is  chosen  privately  and  per- 
sonally for  the  sake  of  his  own  enjoyment,  but  as  a  member 
of  a  holy  society  and  as  a  citizen  in  the  great  common- 
wealth of  Israel ;  and  as  the  consequence  of  election  for 
service  and  royal  anointing  for  the  work  of  the  Lord,  the 
elect  servant  shall  see  the  Messianic  glory  and  final  triumph 
of  the  kingdom  of  God.  If  in  the  later  Isaiah  the  concep- 
tion of  the  divine  Servant  assumes  a  more  personal  Messi- 
anic form,  still  the  divine  election  of  the  one  is  for  the 
sake  of  the  many  —  the  chosen  Servant  represents  the 
people:  "with  his  stripes  we  are  healed";  "by  his  knowl- 
edge shall  my  righteous  servant  justify  many."  ^ 

This  social  conception  of  the  chief  good  not  only  per- 
vaded the  prophetic  hope  of  the  Messianic  kingdom,  but  it 
moulded  also  and  colored  the  manners  and  morals,  the 
laws  and  the  worship  of  Israel.  We  cannot  find  the  true 
point  of  view  from  which  to  judge  much  of  the  morality 
of  the  Old  Testament,  or  to  understand  many  features  of 
the  Mosaic  legislation  and  the  priestly  code,  unless  we 
constantly  recur  to  this  socialistic  character  of  the  hope  of 
Israel,  and  remember  how  foreign  our  accentuated  indi- 

1  Is.  xliv.  1.  2  Is.  liii.  5,  11. 


CONTEXTS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  91 

vidualism  is  to  the  entire  conception  of  life  and  its  bless- 
ing in  which  the  Hebrew  thought  moved.  The  faith  of 
the  Hebrews  was  national;  their  prayers  were  national; 
their  religious  days  were  consecrated  in  the  memory  of 
national  deliverances  ;  their  festivals  were  rejoicings  in  the 
harvests  which  filled  the  whole  land  with  plenty.  Their 
sin-offerings  were  in  atonement  for  the  transgression  of 
the  people ;  their  whole  ritual  and  worship  moved  on  the 
broad  lines  of  public  obligation  and  the  covenant  of  the. 
people  with  the  Lord.  There  are  recorded  in  the  Old 
Testament  instances  of  solitary  wrestling  with  God  for 
the  blessing,  and  also  penitential  psalms  occur  of  appar- 
ently most  personal  confession  of  sin ;  but  even  these  are 
experiences  of  patriarch  or  king  who  represent  the  national 
dependence  on  God,  or  who  confess  as  their  own  guilt  the 
sin  of  the  people.  Even  the  more  personal  expressions  of 
the  sense  of  injured  righteousness  in  the  psalms,  and  the 
cries  of  individual  souls  for  divine  deliverance,  do  not 
cease  to  have  a  certain  representative  tone  ;  they  transcend 
the  bounds  of  personal  indignation ;  the  voice  of  national 
justice  speaks  in  them ;  they  can  at  times  be  morally 
understood  only  as  expressions  of  the  spirit  of  a  people  in 
the  great  crises  of  its  warfare. 

The  virtues,  as  well  as  the  faults  of  Israel,  are  to  be 
estimated  in  this  social  conception  of  good.     Abraham's 
faith   was   a   social   trust.     He    went   forth   seeking   not 
simply  his  own  ease  or  personal  prosperity^  but  he  looked 
for  a  better  country ;  he  sought  for  a  city  whose  builder 
and  maker  is  God.      The  first  pilgrim  followed  in  faith 
God's   promise   of    blessing   for   the   nations.       And   the-\ 
morality  of  the  Old  Testament   kept  in  the  front  rank/ 
those  virtues  which  were  necessary  to  secure  some  family S 
permanence   and   social   stability.     It   is    marked   by  the 
limitations  and  defects  of  a  moral  system  which  is  intent^ 
upon  this  first  task  of  securing  a  social  basis  for  human 
progress,  and  in  which  the  sphere  and  rights  of  the  indi-  f 
vidual  have  not  come  to  clear  definition.     Heroic  surgery  ■ 
of   foreign  elements    (Amalekites    and   idolatries)   which 
might  cause  the  disintegration  of  the  national  bodj^,  if  suf- 


^ 


92  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

fered  to  grow  within  it,  became  consequently  one  of  the 
early  providential  social  necessities  in  the  history  of  IsraeL 

It  should  be  remarked  further  that  the  idea  of  the  high- 
est good  which  is  to  be  derived  from  the  prophetic  litera- 
i;ure  of  the  Old  Testament  is  the  summation,  in  the  king- 
dom of  God,  of  all  those  material  goods  —  such  as  plenti- 
ful harvests,  springs  of  Avater,  increase  of  cattle,  a  vine  and 
fig  tree  for  every  man,  peace  and  prosperity  within  all  the 
borders  of  a  land  flowing  with  milk  and  honey,  —  which 
make  a  people  contented  and  prosperous.  The  ideal  Mes- 
sianic good  of  the  Hebrews  was  the  fulness  of  all  earthly 
goods. 

The  prosperitj^  of  Zion,  however,  is  to  be  gained  through 
obedience  to  the  law  of  God.  The  prophetic  conception 
of  Messianic  good,  although  often  depicted  in  images  of 
earthly  fruitfulness  and  worldly  splendor,  was  saved  from 
materialism  by  a  thoroughly  ethical  insistence  upon  right- 
eousness as  the  condition  of  permanent  prosperity  for  the 
chosen  people.  Although  it  was  not  yet  a  refined  spirit- 
ualized conception  of  the  future  life  of  man  in  a  realm  of 
unearthly  perfection,  still  a  pure  religious  light  was  thrown 
into  its  worldliness ;  the  splendor  of  the  new  Jerusalem, 
wdiich  the  prophets  foresaw,  was  the  abiding  presence  in  it 
of  the  glory  of  the  Holy  One  of  Israel.  In  the  last  days 
there  was  to  be  a  moral  religious  reunion  of  the  purified 
nation  with  its  king,  and  a  personal  reign  of  the  God  of 
righteousness  of  Zion.^ 

From  this  brief  survey  of  the  Old  Testament  doctrine 
of  the  highest  good  we  gain  this  general  result:  it  is 
primarily  social  welfare  to  be  realized  in  righteousness  in 
the  reign  of  the  Holy  One  of  Israel.  Any  ideal,  therefore, 
which  is  chiefly  individualistic,  which  does  not  contain  as 
essential  to  its  content  the  conception  of  the  welfare  of 
human  society,  falls  short  of  the  ancient  HebrcAv  ideal, 
and  is  less  than  the  pattern  that  was  shown  Moses  on  the 
holy  mount.  No  individual  of  us  is  to  be  made  ultimately 
happy,  no  single  solitary  soul  can  win  life's  largest  bless- 

1  *'  The  conception  of  a  society  organized  on  the  basis  of  ethical  religion 
was  peculiar  to  Jewish  thought."  —  Toy,  Judaism  and  Christianity,  p.  338. 


CONTENTS    OF    THE   CHRISTIAN    IDEAL  93 

ing,  apart  from  his  brethren,  except  through  his  mem- 
bership in  the  human  race,  and  his  participation  in  the 
final  redemption  of  the  workl  for  which  Christ  died. 
This  moral  ideal  of  the  possible  perfection  of  the  indi-T 
vidual  only  in  and  through  the  final  consummation  of  the 
kingdom  of  redemption,  is  significantly  implied  in  a  verse  ' 
in  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  in  which  the  original 
Hebrew  conception  of  social  salvation  underlies  the  Chris- 
tian hope  of  the  perfect  life :  "  That  apart  from  us  they 
should  not  be  made  perfect  "  ^ 

§  2.      THE    NEW    TESTAMENT    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    HIGHEST    GOOD 

In  the  gospels  we  have  the  direct  reflection  of  the  moral 
ideal  which  was  revealed  through  Jesus  Christ.  In  the 
epistles  we  find  that  ideal  as  it  was  taken  up  in  the  lives 
of  his  disciples,  and  applied  in  many  directions  to  the 
conditions  of  the  first  Christians  in  the  world.  But  in 
order  that  we  may  apprehend  Jesus'  teaching  concerning 
man's  chief  good  in  its  distinctive  purity  and  originality, 
w^e  should  seek  to  behold  it  against  the  background  of  the 
contemporary  Judaism,  across  which  it  shone  as  a  revela- 
tion from  God.  We  should  not  only  trace  the  connection 
between  Jesus'  moral  teaching  and  the  more  spiritual 
words  of  the  prophets,  but  also  we  should  note,  if  possible, 
the  points  of  contact  and  of  contrast  between  the  teachings 
which  Jesus  gave  to  his  disciples  and  the  common  opinions 
taught  in  the  school  of  the  synagogue. 

In  the  Messianic  ideal,  which  was  cherished  by  the 
Judaism  contemporary  with  the  time  of  Christ,  amid 
some  diversity  of  traditional  coloring,  certain  definite 
lines  may  be  traced.  One  characteristic  of  it  was  a 
"  violent  supernaturalism,"  a  conception  of  the  promised 
good  as  something  *'  externally  transcendent,"  in  contrast 
with  this  present  world.^  Both  in  its  conception  of  the 
heavenly  Jerusalem,  and  its  expectation  of  the  signs  and 
means  by  which  the  kingdom  of  heaven  was  to  descend 
to  earth,  the   Messianic  hope  at  this   period  was  super- 

1  Heb.  xi.  40. 

2  Schiirer,  History  of  the  Jeioish  People,  Div.  ii.  vol.  ii.  p.  134:. 


94  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

naturalistic  rather  than  ethical;  a  hope  of  supernatural 
interference  and  judgment  rather  than  of  moral  progress 
and  consummation.  Another  line,  which  had  become 
hard  and  fixed  in  the  Judaic  hope,  was  marked  by  the 
idea  of  the  national  privilege.  In  the  older  prophetic  lit- 
erature a  purer  spiritual  light  had  imparted  even  to  the  local 
coloring  of  the  Messianic  hope  a  certain  humanness  and 
universality.  Israel  also  in  its  later  subjection  to  the 
world-powers  had  been  brought  into  a  larger  contact  with 
cosmopolitan  tendencies  of  thought  and  life,  and  had  con- 
sequently been  compelled  to  gain  some  broader  knowledge 
of  the  relation  of  Israel  to  the  great  kingdoms  of  the 
world ;  but  still  its  Messianic  view  had  failed  to  reach  a 
true  ethical  universality.  Tlie  existence  of  a  Messianic 
hope  in  the  heart  of  Israel,  and  its  revival  and  persistence 
in  any  form,  is  an  historical  sign  of  the  divine  working  in 
the  world;  but  in  Judaism  this  higher  hope  had  clothed 
itself  ill  too  political  forms,  and  had  become  the  expecta- 
tion, not  of  a  universal  reign  of  love  among  men,  but  of 
the  restoration  of  the  true  Israel.^ 

The  Messiah  was  to  appear  as  the  world-ruler,  and 
Israel  was  to  have  in  his  kingdom  unquestioned  and  glori- 
ous primacy.  He  was  not  conceived  as  a  Messiah  Saviour, 
who  through  vicarious  suffering  should  reconcile  the  world 
to  God,  but  as  a  Messiah  King,  in  whose  righteousness 
indeed  as  well  as  power  his  chosen  people  should  be  re- 
stored to  God's  favor  and  glory.  At  his  coming  the  four 
winds  of  heaven  should  bring  back  the  faithful  Israelites 
from  the  ends  of  the  world  to  their  promised  inheritance.^ 

Through  judgments  and  by  acceptance  of  the  Jewish  relig- 
ion, others  than  Israelites  might  indeed  gain  participation 
in  the  Messianic  kingdom,  but  the  glory  of  that  kingdom 
was  not  spiritually  and  largely  conceived  as  the  promise  of 
a  redeemed  humanity.     The  picture  of  the  Messianic  age 

1  "The  kingdom  of  God  is  understood  in  a  purely  national  way;  and  while 
the  whole  view  of  the  future  involves  the  ordinary  ethical  elements,  the 
Messiah  is  in  himself  not  specifically  an  ethical  power,"  —  Toy,  Judaism  and 
Christianity,  p.  327. 

2  The  hope  of  individual  resurrection  was  develoijed  also  with  this  expec- 
tation of  a  future  Messianic  world-age. 


CONTENTS   or   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  95 

on  wliich  Judaism  looked  with  patient  expectation,  was 
a  representation  of  the  exaltation  of  Israel,  rather  than 
of  the  salvation  of  the  world. ^ 

To  this  feature  should  be  added  the  dogmatic  character 
of  the  Judaic  Messianic  expectation.  Even  their  hope, 
as  well  as  their  law,  had  become,  as  Schiirer  remarks, 
"increasingly  dogmatized."  The  "poetic  picture"  of 
the  prophet  had  become  the  learned  dogma  of  the  scribe .^ 
The  later  Rabbinical  literature  abounds  in  gross  material 
imagery  of  the  future  glory  of  Zion.^ 

Doubtless  the  old  Hebrew  liope  still  held  its  supremacy  in  the  days 
of  Christ  among  many  devout  Israelites,  and  a  profound  national  sense 
of  the  need  of  moral  reform  appears  unmistakably  in  the  preaching  of 
John  the  Baptist ;  but  the  Messianic  expectation  which  Jesus  found 
among  the  scribes  and  teachers  of  the  people  was  chiefly  a  hope  of  polit- 
ical deliverance  and  national  dominion  to  be  ushered  in  by  signs  from 
heaven,  through  supernatural  power  and  judgments,  rather  than  a  pro- 
foundly spiritual  and  ethical,  and  a  broadly  human  hope  of  redemption. 

In  seeking  to  recover  the  contemporaneous  Jewish  idea 
of  the  kingdom  of  God  in  the  time  of  Christ,  we  should 
note  also  the  legalization  of  the  Judaic  idea  of  God.  The 
growth  of  Judaism  and  the  Judaic  veneration  for  the  law, 
after  Ezra's  reformation,  shows  some  marked  resemblances 
to  the  growth  in  post-reformation  Protestant  theology  of 
the  legal  conception  of  salvation,  and  particularly  the  ten- 
dency to  formalize  and  almost  to  deify  the  literal  inspira- 
tion and  authority  of  the  Scriptures.^  Similarly  the  devel- 
opment of  Judaism  was  distinctly  marked  by  the  tendency 

1  Edersheim,  Life  of  Christ,  vol.  i.  p.  164.  2  Schurer,  Ibid.  134. 

3  See  Weber,  Die  Lehren  des  Talmud,  s.  356  f.  It  was  described  for  nistance 
as  an  age  "  in  which  all  should  eat  cakes  and  dress  in  silks."  Caution,  how- 
ever, should  he  exercised  in  inferring  the  opinions  contemporary  with  Christ 
from  the  later  Rahbinism. 

4  This  has  been  often  characterized  as  Bibliolatry.  An  example  of  it  is  to  be 
found  in  the  discussion  which  Avas  raised  among  the  Lutheran  scholastics  of  the 
seventeenth  century  over  the  question  whether  one  may  call  the  Holy  Scripture 
a  creature.  It  was  held  that  there  was  a  mystical  union  of  the  Spirit  with  the 
word  of  God  {verbum  dei  esse  aliquid  dei);  that  the  Holy  Scripture  is  not 
simply  an  instrument  {instrumentum  inanimatum).  The  doctrine  of  the  com- 
munication of  the  divine  idioms  was  carried  over  to  the  conception  of  the  Holy 
Scripture.  Dorner  justly  characterizes  this  tendency  in  the  Lutheran  ortho- 
doxy as  "  a  deification  of  the  Holy  Scripture."  See  his  Geschichte  der  protest. 
Theologie,  s.  553  f . 


96  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

to  lay  the  whole  stress  of  religion  on  the  law  and  its  observ- 
ance, while  the  freer,  more  prophetic  elements  of  spiritual 
faith  were  withdrawn  from  the  teaching  of  the  schools. 
The  law  gains  a  position  above  everything  else  in  Judaism. 
'MJpon  three  things,"  said  Simon  the  Just,  ''stands  the 
world ;  upon  the  law,  the  worship  of  God  (Temple-service), 
and  well-doing."  In  this  Rabbinical  order  the  law  is  put 
first,  worship  second,  and  morality  last.  The  law  as  the 
source  of  true  life  and  condition  of  blessing  was  the  high- 
est good.  The  chief  end  of  creation,  according  to  the 
Rabbis,  was  the  creation  of  the  law.  Many  of  the  more 
extravagant  sayings  concerning  the  law  which  may  be  gath- 
ered from  the  Rabbinical  literature  are  of.  a  later  date  than 
the  time  of  Christ;  but  they  illustrate  the  tendency  of 
Judaism  to  a  legalization  even  of  the  idea  of  the  living 
God,  —  a  tendency  which  was  already  evident  in  the  teach- 
ings of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  of  our  Lord's  day.^ 
Already  in  the  heroic  age  of  the  Maccabees  the  law  had 
become  the  war  cry  of  the  people,  as  it  could  not  have  been 
in  the  prophetic  age.^  In  the  later  Judaism  the  law  seems 
almost  to  have  taken  tlie  place  of  God  himself.  Heaven 
became  a  high  school  for  the  study  of  the  law ;  and  God 
is  represented  as  busied  daily  with  the  study  of  the  law.^ 
The  centre  of  the  true  religion  is  transferred  from  the  per- 
son to  the  law  of  God.  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  the  rule 
of  the  Law.     Where  His  Law  is,  there  God  is. 

Such  was  the  revolution  which  Judaism  finally  wrought 
in  the  religion  of  the  prophets.  Jerusalem  had  killed  the 
prophets ;  and  it  worshipped  the  letter  which  killeth. 

We  turn  now  from  this  brief  survey  of  contemporary 
Judaism,  which  forms  the  background  of  the  teaching  of 
Jesus,  to  the  moral  ideal  which  we  may  discover  shining  in 
his  gospel. 

I.  Jesus'  Moral  Ideal  as  disclosed  in  his  doctrine  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God. 

1  See  Schiirer,  Ihid.  p.  93. 

2  1  Mac.  ii.  27;  iii.  21.  "And  Mattatliias  oried  throus^hout  the  city  with  a 
loud  voice,  saying,  Whoever  is  zealous  of  the  law,  and  maintaineth  the  cove- 
nant, let  him  follow  me."     "  But  we  fight  for  our  lives  and  our  laws." 

3  Weber,  Ibid.  s.  154. 


CONTENTS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  97 

The  gospel  of  the  kingdom  of  God  which  Jesus  came 
preaching  was  not  wholly  a  new  gospel,  without  points  of 
continuity  with  the  prophetic  teaching,  and  historically 
unintelligible,  like  a  revelation  in  a  foreign  language,  to 
the  common  people  of  Judea.  Jesus  spoke  in  the  vernac- 
ular of  men's  hearts,  and  his  truth  needed  no  scribe  to 
interpret  it  to  the  villagers  whom  he  met  in  the  way,  or 
the  throngs  who  crowded  him  as  he  taught  by  the  shore 
of  the  lake.  His  idea  of  the  kingdom  of  God  took  root  in 
the  common  ground  of  the  Israelitish  hope  of  the  restora- 
tion of  the  throne  of  David.  His  doctrine  of  the  kingdom 
continues  the  broader  lines  of  the  prophetic  teaching  con- 
cerning the  Messianic  age.  As  the  loftiest  mountain 
stands  on  the  common  earth,  and  springs  from  the  habit- 
able fields,  so  Jesus'  moral  ideal  is  human,  and  does  not 
hang  in  mid-air  like  some  gorgeous  imagery  of  cloud. 
But  no  sooner  do  we  recognize  the  familiar  ideas  on  which 
Jesus  rests  his  preaching  of  the  gospel  of  the  kingdom, 
than  we  perceive  also  how  directly,  and  with  what  higher 
purpose,  Jesus'  teaching  lifts  itself  out  of  the  confusions  of 
the  Rabbinical  traditions,  and  springs  at  once  into  a  loftier 
and  purer  revelation  of  God's  design ;  in  its  unique  and 
unapproachable  grandeur  it  dwarfs  all  the  lesser  heights 
to  wdiich  the  prophetic  hopes  had  risen,  and  remains  to 
this  day  the  transcendent  and  commanding  ideal  of  the 
possible  exaltation  of  our  humanity. 

1.  A  peculiarity  of  Jesus'  preaching  of  the  gospel  of  the 
kingdom  which  immediately  arrests  attention  is  his  an- 
nouncement that  it  is  now  and  here  on  this  earth.  It  had 
been  begun  in  the  Old  Dispensation,  and  it  was  to  be  com- 
pleted in  the  future ;  but  Jesus  taught  with  remarkable 
insistence  that  it  was  an  immediate  and  actual  presence 
and  reign  of  God  among  men.^  To  the  common  thought 
of  the  people  the  Messianic  age  was  the  world-age  to  come. 
The  Baptist  indeed,  in  immediate  anticipation  of  Clirist, 
had  preached  its  near  coming.  But  Jesus'  announcement 
of  its  presence  on  this  earth  was  different  even  from  John 
the  Baptist's  proclamation  that  it  was  at  hand.     For  Jesus 

1  Matt.  iv.  17;  x.  7;  xii.  28;  Mark  i.  15;  Luke  xvii.  20-21. 


98  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

proclaimed  the  actual  existence  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
on  this  earth  as  the  reason  for  the  discipleship  which  he 
required.  He  had  not  come,  like  the  Baptist,  to  bring  a 
new  moral  demand  merely,  or  to  enforce  a  stern  require- 
ment of  rej)entance  as  a  preparation  for  the  coming  of  the 
kiiigdom ;  in  Jesus'  gospel  the  kingdom  of  God  is  already 
here ;  and  because  it  is  a  present  reality,  the  Lord  asks  for 
repentance  and  invites  faith.  The  real  presence  of  the 
power  of  heaven  on  earth  is  the  joyous  reason  for  Chris- 
tian life  and  hope.  "  Make  ye  ready  the  way  of  the  Lord," 
John  the  Baptist  had  cried  in  the  wilderness.  The  voice 
of  the  last  of  the  prophets  was  still  a  call  for  preparation 
for  the  coming  of  the  kingdom.  "  The  time  is  fulfilled," 
said  Jesus,  when  he  came  bidding  men  repent  and  believe 
in  the  gospel.  The  Christian  conception  of  life  and  its 
supreme  good  rests  on  this  fundamental  fact  which  Jesus 
announced,  that  the  kingdom  of  God  is  not  something 
wholly  future,  or  remote  from  our  present  participation  in 
it,  but  it  is  a  real  power  and  an  actual  reign  of  God  already 
begun  on  earth,  —  a  kingdom  of  heaven  into  which  we  may 
now  enter,  and  which  offers  through  citizenship  in  it  some 
immediate  possession  of  the  highest  good  and  present  part 
in  the  eternal  life. 

2.  Consequently  Jesus'  moral  idealism  was  at  the  same 
time  a  moral  realism,  so  far  as  he  preached  that  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  is  already  come.  The  ideal  life  of  man  is 
the  life  in  Christ  which  is  already  begun.  The  ideal  good 
is  something  here  and  noAV  to  be  striven  for  and  possessed. 
It  was  no  dreamer  speaking  of  strange,  beautiful,  far-ofp 
things,  who  spake  as  never  man  spake  in  Galilee ;  the 
Son  of  man  carries  indeed  ever  with  him,  in  his  inward 
consciousness  of  heaven,  a  vision  of  God  and  the  blessed 
life,  surpassing  all  prophetic  conceptions ;  ^  yet  Jesus, 
though  having  light  supernal  in  his  own  inward  being, 
does  not  separate  himself  from  publicans  and  sinners,  but 
graciously  announces  everywhere,  and  to  whomever  he 
meets,  that  this  kingdom  of  God  is  at  hand,  and  may  be 
found  among  men,  that  it  is  a  present  light  and  a  practi- 
cable truth  for  every  man's  life. 

1  See  the  remarkable  declaration  of  John  iii.  13. 


CONTEI^TS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN    IDEAL  99 

The  Christian  conception  of  the  highest  good  is,  ac- 
cordingly, both  ideal  and  real;  it  is  an  ideal  which  is 
transcendent  and  at  the  same  time  immanent ;  an  ideal 
^Yhich  surpasses  all  known  good,  but  which  is  also  realized 
in  any  virtue  and  in  any  praise. ^ 

3.  Resembling  this  feature  of  Jesus'  doctrine  of  the 
kingdom,  and  equally  surprising,  is  his  positiveness  of 
thought  and  word  concerning  it.  The  moral  positiveness 
of  Jesus'  ethical  teaching,  —  this  sunlit  sureness  of  his 
moral  ideal,  —  is  something  unexampled  and  superlative. 
None  of  our  doubts  hang  mistily  over  his  lofty  ideal  of 
the  kingdom;  our  human  questionings  have  sunk  into 
silence  in  the  "  Yerih^,  verily  I  say  unto  you  "  of  his 
daily  speech;  his  gospel  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  from 
beginning  to  end,  and  around  the  whole  broad  circumfer- 
ence of  it,  lies  before  us  like  so  much  clear,  sunny  cer- 
tainty. There  is  not  a  cloud  in  the  Master's  sky;  there 
is  no  shadow  over  all  his  prospect. 

This  spiritual  positiveness  is  unique  in  its  kind.  It  is 
not  like  the  blind  confidence  of  the  dogmatist,  which  is  a 
too  familiar  folly  among  us ;  nor  is  it  the  self-assertion  of 
spiritual  ignorance,  the  vain  superficiality  of  minds  that 
do  not  feel  the  mystery  of  existence,  nor  know  the  deep 
things  of  God.  Jesus'  sureness  of  the  Father's  truth  bears 
more  resemblance  to  the  quiet  and  reasoned  confidence  of 
positive  science.  It  seems  like  the  calm  certainty  of  knowl- 
edge. This  one  man  speaks  from  his  experience  of  the 
unseen  world,  as  other  men  will  speak  from  their  experi- 
ence of  the  things  that  are  seen.  We  cannot  fail  to  be 
impressed  with  this  objective  tone  of  Jesus'  language  con- 
cerning things  spiritual  and  eternal. 

This  objectiveness,  moreover,  of  his  thought  and  words 
was  a  general  spiritual  characteristic  of  Jesus'  whole  teach- 
ing, as  the  disciples  received  it  and  bare  witness  to  it.  So 
marked  is  this  characteristic,  so  powerful  was  its  spiritual 
effect  upon  those  who  were  with  him,  that  the  disciples 
themselves  ere  long  caught  the  Master's  positive  tone,  and 
with  a  confidence  begotten  of  his   Spirit   apostles   speak 

1  Phil.  iv.  8. 


100  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

and  write  of  those  high  and  eternal  things  which  they 
have  seen  and  known.  It  is  for  theology  to  inquire 
whence  this  spiritual  positiveness  of  the  gospel  of  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  had  its  source,  and  in  what  revela- 
tion of  God  its  sufficient  cause  is  to  be  discovered ;  but 
Christian  ethics  will  show  that  the  conception  of  the 
highest  good,  which  is  embodied  in  Jesus'  gospel  of  the 
kingdom,  possesses  a  positiveness,  and  has  exercised  a  power 
of  impressing  itself  upon  generation  after  generation  of 
men,  which  surpasses  all  the  ideals  of  the  ancient  faiths 
and  philosophies,  and  their  influence ;  and  which  remains  a 
present  commandment  and  inspiration  of  virtue  unequalled 
and  unconquerable  in  the  world.  The  rnoral  conception 
of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  in  Jesus'  first  realization  of  it 
and  through  subsequent  Christian  experience  of  it,  con- 
tains the  materials  of  an  unfinished  jet  positive  science  of 
the  ideal.  Still  as  of  old  they  who  hear  his  voice  and 
who  are  of  his  truth,  will  say  with  a  faith  which  may  pro- 
voke denials,  but  which  abides  amid  all  doubts,  as  the 
mountains  stand  while  the  clouds  pass,  — '  The  kingdom 
of  God  is  here,  and  we  know  something  of  its  power  and 
its  peace  in  our  inmost  souls ;  here,  near  at  hand,  known 
to  us  in  our  best  moments  and  most  Christian  deeds,  yet 
stretching  far  away  into  the  unknown  eternity  around  this 
world-age,  is  the  reign  of  Christ  and  the  love  of  God.' 

4.  Besides  these  more  general  truths  and  aspects  of 
Jesus'  revelation  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  we  may  ob- 
serve in  his  gospel  of  it  these  particulars  of  his  doctrine 
of  the  supreme  good. 

(1)  It  is  personal  good.  To  the  Jewish  mind  the 
expectation  of  the  kingdom  of  God  had  become  too  pre- 
dominantly, as  we  have  seen,  a  political  hope ;  Jesus 
taught  that  the  beginnings  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  lie 
in  personal  character,  and  its  good  is  to  be  realized  through 
the  new  life  and  spiritual  victory  of  the  individual  man. 
Jesus  called  his  disciples  by  name,  man  by  man,  into  his 
kingdom.  He  sought  immediately  for  personal  following 
rather  than  national  restoration.  He  taught  the  Pharisees 
that  the  kingdom  of  God  should  not  come  with  outward 


CONTENTS    OF   THE   CHPwISTIAN   IDEAL  101 

pomp  and  observation ;  that  it  already  was  in  the  midst 
of  them ;  ^  looking  at  the  very  souls  of  men  he  had  said, 
"  Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit :  for  theirs  is  the  kingdom  of 
heaven."  ^  His  gospel  of  the  rule  of  God  became  an  intensely 
personal  message.  The  kingdom  of  heaven  among  men  is 
a  temper  of  mind,  a  spiritual  disposition,  a  state  of  heart. 
To  enter  into  the  kingdom  is  not  to  make  a  pilgrimage,  or 
to  go  up  through  the  gate  into  the  holy  city ;  but  to  come 
into,  a  certain  willingness  of  mind,  to  be  of  a  certain  spirit, 
to  have  a  new  heart.  One  is  to  contiuue  a  member  of  that 
kingdom,  having  the  rights  of  its  celestial  citizenship,  and 
being  an  heir  of  its  promise,  not  by  observing  any  outward 
ceremonial,  but  by  abiding  in  the  heavenly  spirit  of  the 
kingdom.  The  kingdom  of  God  is  constituted  of  persons, 
and  has  its  glory  in  personal  worths  and  fidelities.  The 
kingdom  is  to  be  built  of  persons  having  Christ-like 
characters.  Once,  by  an  act  of  memorable  ethical  teach- 
ing, and  with  his  wonderful  power  of  making  the  least 
incidents  disclose  the  largest  truths,  Jesus  showed  to  his 
disciples  the  only  good  which  should  be  the  object  of  their 
ambition,  when  he  took  a  little  child  and  put  him  in  the 
midst  of  them,  and  said,  "  Verily  I  say  unto  you.  Except  ye 
turn,  and  become  as  little  children,  ye  shall  in  no  wise 
enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven."  ^  In  that  simple, 
divine  way  Jesus  revealed  what  essentially  and  eternally 
the  kinofdom  of  heaven  is :  it  was  not  to  be  a  restored 
Hebrew  commonwealth  wdth  its  thrones  of  dominion; 
not  a  glorified  earthly  city  which  shall  exercise  lordship 
over  the  nations,  and  in  which  worldly  ambition  may  still 
find  empire ;  it  is  not  the  supreme  political  good  which 
the  Sadducees  covet,  nor  the  reign  of  the  law  which 
the  Pharisees  exalt  above  the  claims  of  humanity  and  the 
fatherhood  of  God.  Jesus'  teaching  of  the  nature  of  the 
supreme  ethical  good,  when  he  put  a  little  child  as  the 
greatest  in  the  midst  of  the  disciples,  was  the  idealization 
of  the  pure  heart  and  the  loving,  trustful  spirit.  We 
must  be  born  anew  of  the  Spirit  to  see  the  kingdom;^  it 
can  only  be  seen  by  those  who  have  hearts  to  see  it ;  for 

1  Luke  xvii.  21.  2  Matt.  v.  3.  3  Matt.  XAiii.  3.  ^  John  iii.  3. 


102  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

the  essential  reality  and  the  eternal  blessedness  of  it  con. 
sist  in  having  the  Spirit  of  Christ. 

(2)  The  kingdom  of  God  is  a  human  good  as  well  as  an 
individual  attainment.  It  is,  as  has  just  been  remarked,  a 
reio-n  of  God  in  the  personal  life,  and  a  good  to  be  acquired 
through  individual  character ;  yet  it  is  likewise  a  kingdom 
or  societ}^  of  men,  and  its  good  is  to  be  secured  in  the 
larger  life  of  humanity.  The  prophets  had  gained  some 
conception  of  the  human  universality  of  the  coming  Mes- 
sianic blessing;  but  Jesus'  gospel  of  the  kingdom  for  all 
nations  went  far  beyond  the  broadest  lines  of  the  prophetic 
thinking  in  its  pure  and  absolute  humanness.  He  brought 
this  feature  of  his  moral  ideal  into  the  sharpest  contrast 
with  the  current  Judaism  of  his  day  by  his  quiet,  bold 
word  that  the  Sabbath  was  made  for  man.  He  thus 
selected  the  one  institution  which  was  the  sacred  heritage 
of  Judaism,  and  which  the  law  had  hedged  about  with 
painstaking  punctiliousness,  and  he  freed  that  most  relig- 
ious institution  from  its  Jewish  exclusiveness,  and  brought 
that  treasure  of  the  kingdom  forth  for  man's  common  use, 
making  its  divine  obligation  consist  in  its  serviceableness 
to  man.  The  kingdom,  whose  gospel  he  came  preaching, 
was  thus  proclaimed  in  the  most  unmistakable  manner  to 
be  throughout  a  kingdom  for  man,  —  the  reign  of  God 
which  shall  be  also  the  true  reign  of  man  on  the  earth. 

This  humanness  of  Jesus'  gospel  corresponds  to  his 
personal  identification  with  humanity.  The  Messiah  who 
has  come  to  establish  the  kingdom  of  heaven  as  an  ever 
present  and  continuous  spiritual  reality  on  earth,  Himself 
belongs  to  humanity,  sums  up  our  humanity,  represents 
humanity  before  God. 

The  highest  good,  then,  as  it  is  presented  to  our  thought 
and  desire  in  Jesus'  doctrine  of  the  kingdom,  more  than  in 
the  broadest  conceptions  of  any  of  the  prophets  before 
him,  is  social,  human  good ;  it  is  no  ideal  of  life  to  be 
attained  by  men  individually,  apart  from  the  perfection  of 
humanity,  and  without  participation  in  the  great  human 
wliole  of  being  and  its  redemption.  The  harvest  is  not 
the  individual  ingathering,  but  the  end  of  the  workh     The 


CONTENTS    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  103 

Christian  conception  of  good  is  to  be  realized  in  the  con 
summation  of  the  ages  of  our  one  human  history;  it  is 
good  for  man,  God's  love  for  the  world.^ 

We  are  to  receive  our  personal  part  and  to  share  indi- 
vidually in  this  human  weal  and  perfection  through  lives 
bound  up  dutifully  with  the  lives  of  others,  and  in  the  ful- 
filments of  our  common  human  relations,  obligations,  and 
destiny.  The  Christian  Ideal  of  the  coming  world-age  and 
its  blessedness  is  no  proud  philosophic  hope  of  some 
spiritual  attainment  of  the  rare  and  favored  few ;  all  men's 
paths  run  by  the  open  doors  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven ; 
we  are  to  be  made  perfect  as  w^e  shall  enter  into  one  sal- 
vation, and  have  fellowship  in  one  great  redemption. 

It  is  true,  but  it  only  serves  to  bring  out  more  signally 
this  ideal  of  Jesus'  gospel  for  the  world,  that  the  disciples 
at  first  were  far  from  comprehending  his  ideal  of  a  saved 
humanity.  It  is  a  striking  evidence  of  the  originality  of 
Jesus'  teaching  that  the  disciples  in  whose  narratives  the 
life  of  Christ  is  immediately  reflected,  did  not  always 
understand  the  simplicity  that  was  in  Christ,  nor  know 
what  spirit  he  was  of.  It  is  true,  and  it  shows  Jesus' 
unique  superiority  to  all  the  teaching  and  thought  then 
current  in  Judea,  that  his  departure  from  his  own,  and 
the  day  of  Pentecost,  and  the  lessons  of  their  work  in 
preaching  his  gospel,  were  needed  in  order  to  bring  to 
their  knowledofc  the  universal  elements  of  truth  which 
had  from  the  first  been  present,  dimly  apprehended  by 
them,  if  understood  at  all,  in  the  daily  teaching  of  their 
Master.  Even  now,  after  centuries  have  passed,  the 
Church  has  much  to  learn  of  the  breadth  and  the  pure 
sunny  humanness  of  Jesus'  gospel.  Where  is  there  to  be 
found  a  social  ideal  like  this  Christian  Ideal  of  humanity, 
and  the  salvation  of  humanity,  which  Jesus  came  preach- 
ing in  the  gospel  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  ? 

(3)  While  this  kingdom  belongs  thus  to  humanity,  and 
in  its  idea  and  purpose  is  for  man,  it  is  also  something 

1  Whether  any  individuals  may  througli  persistent  sin  fall  out  of  this  true 
humanity  and  its  consummation,  is  another  question ;  the  point  ahove  is  that 
no  man  can  attain  to  tlie  supreme  ,2:ood,  can  have  everlasting  life,  except  by 
ha\iug  part  in  man's  redemption  from  evil. 


104  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

superlmman.  It  is  the  kingdom,  that  is,  of  God  for  man — • 
the  kinofdom  of  heaven  established  and  advancino-  on  earth. 
Jesus'  ideal  for  man  had  its  centre  of  licrht  and  racUant 
power  in  God.  The  coming  of  the  kingdom  is  a  revelation 
of  God.  This  good  comes  from  above,  and  is  to  be  gradu- 
ally naturalized  in  the  Christian  life  and  institutions  of 
humanity.  It  does  not  come  of  flesh  and  blood,  but  of  the 
Spirit.  We  must  not  disguise  this  contrast  between  the 
Christian  ideal  and  the  best  scientific  hope  of  humanity  at 
the  very  point  where  the  two  bear  otherwise  the  closest 
resemblance.  There  is  a  scientific  humanitarianism,  very 
like  the  Christian,  which  our  age  has  won.  The  supreme 
ethical  good  is  conceived  in  terms  of  the  worthiest  happi- 
ness of  the  greatest  number.  The  ideal  which  all  our 
sciences  should  serve,  is  the  largest  possible  fulfilment  of 
the  life  of  humanity.  This  is  also  a  Christian  conception, 
and  herein  evolutionary  and  Christian  ethics  are  looking 
in  the  same  direction.  But  the  resemblance  is  framed  in 
a  larger  contrast.  Christian  humanitarianism  is  the  hope 
of  the  glorification  of  man  through  the  Spirit  of  God. 
Jesus'  gospel  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  not  the  same  as 
a  gospel  of  some  possible  better  kingdom  to  spring  up  from 
the  earth.  It  is  the  annunciation  of  a  spiritual  power  in 
man  working  for  a  good  which  is  here  and  now  to  be  real- 
ized, but  which  is  not  to  be  limited  by  the  conditions  of 
present  environment,  and  which  has  in  itself  the  potency 
and  the  promise  of  higher  spiritual  life  and  perfection. 
As  the  sky  is  to  be  found  at  every  point  when  we  lift  our 
eyes  to  the  horizon,  and  the  whole  earth  has  its  existence 
in  the  sky  which  encompasses  it ;  so  when  we  look  to  the 
end  of  any  human  effort,  and  reach  in  our  thought  the 
horizons  of  all  earthly  perfection,  Christian  ethics  beholds 
this  good  of  humanity  contained  in  a  larger  prospect,  and 
having  its  place  and  order  as  a  part  of  the  whole  kingdom 
of  heaven.  We  belong  to  this  kingdom  of  heaven  as  men 
who  are  immortals.  We  receive  these  present  beginnings 
of  character  and  its  moral  good  as  the  heirs  of  an  eternal 
inheritance. 

In  the  teaching  of  Jesus  two  phrases  for  the  reign  of 


CONTENTS    OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    IDEAL  105 

the  perfect  good  occur,  —  the  kingdom  of  God  and  the 
kingdom  of  heaven.  The  redeemed  and  perfected  society 
of  men  is  the  kingdom  of  God,  because  it  is  of  God  and 
from  Him  in  its  origin,  its  conservation,  its  growth,  and 
its  promise  of  final  consummation.  It  is  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,  because  it  is  heavenly  in  its  spirit,  and  celestial 
also  in  its  hope  of  life  bej^ond  all  death.^ 

(4)  A  further  characteristic  of  Jesus'  ideal  to  be  ol> 
served  in  his  doctrine  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  lies  in  his 
teaching  concerning  the  manner  of  its  coming,  or  the  law 
of  the  realization  of  the  ideal  good  among  men.  This 
characteristic  becomes  striking  when  we  compare  the 
teaching  of  the  gospels  in  this  respect  with  ideas  of  the 
Messianic  time  which  became  current  among  the  Jews  in 
the  early  days  of  Christianity. 

According  to  a  popular  Jewish  belief,  at  the  time  of  the 
Babylonian  captivity,  when  the  holy  city  had  been  laid 
waste  and  the  temple  destroyed,  the  tabernacle  and  ark 
of  God,  the  two  tables  of  the  law,  the  altar,  all  the  holy 
vessels,  and  the  insignia  of  the  high  priest,  were  carried 
off,  and  safely  hidden  in  the  earth  either  at  Mt.  Nebo, 
or,  as  the  Samaritans  affirmed,  in  their  holy  mountain  of 
Gerizim.2  The  recovery  of  these  sacred  vessels  from  the 
earth  in  which  they  were  hidden  was  to  signalize  the  restora- 
tion of  the  kingdom.  Pilate  had  lost  his  office  and  been  sent 
in  banishment  to  Gaul,  not  because  he  had  refused  Roman 
justice  to  Jesus  whom  he  delivered  to  be  crucified,  but 
on  account  of  his  cruel  massacre  at  Mt.  Gerizim  of  Samar- 
itans who  had  gone  in  triumphal  procession  to  dig  up  the 
hidden  glory  of  the  Messianic  kingdom  from  the  graund.^ 
That  was  one  Jewish  way  of  praying  for  the  coming 
of  the  kingdom ;  —  restore  the  past ;  give  us  back  the 
former  power ;  recover  the  sacred  vessels ;  dig  in  the  past 

1  By  the  Rabbis  the  expressions  kingdom,  kingdom  of  God,  and  kingdom 
of  heaven,  seem  to  have  been  used  interchangeably,  but  to  have  been  distin- 
guished from  the  kingdom  of  the  Messiah,  or  future  Messianic  world-age. 
Heaven  was  often  used  instead  of  the  name  of  God.  See  references  in  Eder- 
sheim's  The  Life  and  Times  of  Jesus  the  Messiah,  vol.  i.  p.  267. 

2  See  2  Mac.  ii.  2-8;  Apocalypse  of  Baruch,  vi.  7-10. 
®  Ewald,  Hist,  of  Israely  v.  p.  69. 


106  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

to  find  the  future.  So  the  Jews  guarded  the  tombs  of  the 
prophets,  and  hoped  that  the  signs  of  the  nation's  glory 
might  be  exhumed  from  some  cave  of  the  earth.  Many 
looked  also  in  an  opposite  direction  for  the  Messianic 
world-age.  In  the  days  of  tribulation  they  had  imagined 
that  the  glory  of  the  kingdom  was  transferred  bodily  to 
heaven,  and  they  expected  that  at  the  time  appointed  it 
would  descend  with  sudden  and  supernatural  power  from 
heaven.  According  to  one  tradition,  the  sacred  vessels 
had  been  taken  up  into  heaven,  and  were  there  kept  until 
they  should  be  restored  at  the  coming  of  the  Messiah. 
While  the  Samaritans  were  digging  for  the  sacred  treas- 
ures at  Mt.  Gerizim,  the  Pharisees  in  Jerusalem  were  look- 
ing for  a  sign  from  heaven.  In  this  expectation  of  the 
Rabbis  the  national  hope  had  been  celestialized,^  but  not 
sj)iritualized. 

The  heavenly  Jerusalem  they  thought  had  stood  originally  in  paradise 
before  Adam  fell.  Later  it  had  been  shown  to  Abraham  in  a  vision  of 
the  night.  Moses  also  saw  it  on  Mt.  Sinai.  Ezra  also  saw  it  in  a  vision. 
It  exists  still  in  the  heavens.  In  the  Messianic  day  this  heavenly  city  is  to 
descend  to  earth  and  to  take  the  place  of  the  Jerusalem  which  now  is. 
Schiirer,  opus  cit.  Div.  ii.vol.  ii.  p.  169  ;  Apocalypse  o/Baruch,  iv.  2-6.  By 
some  supernal  means,  according  to  this  mode  of  expectation,  the  final  and 
supreme  good  in  the  coming  world- age  is  to  be  brought  down  ready-made 
from  heaven. 

Jewish  teachers,  it  is  true,  regarded  the  Messianic  age  as  delayed  by 
the  sins  of  the  people;  the  Rabbis  said,  "  If  all  Israel  should  together  for 
one  whole  day  offer  a  common  repentance,  redemption  through  the  Mes- 
siah would  follow.  If  Israel  should  keep  only  two  Sabbaths,  as  is  fitting, 
they  would  at  once  be  redeemed."  Weber,  opus  cit.  s.  334.  Beyschlag 
says  with  truth  that  in  the  sensuously  formed  expectation  of  the  people 
the  material  was  the  substance,  and  the  spiritual  was  the  accident. 
Leben  Jesu,  i.  s.  325. 

Neither  of  these  modes  of  conceivino^  the  restoration  of 
God's  rule  is  ethical.  No  obedience  to  a  law  of  moral 
progress  enters  into  such  prayer  for  the  coming  of  the  reign 
of  love  on  earth. 

We  need  only  point  out  how  striking  a  contrast  is  pre- 
sented by  the  whole  teaching  of  Jesus  concerning  the  com- 
ing of  his  kingdom.     Sacrifice  is  the  method  of  his  rule. 

1  Ewald,  Hist,  of  Israel,  vi.  p.  108. 


CONTENTS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  107 

His  thought  of  his  own  sufferings  and  death,  of  the  mission 
of  his  disciples,  of  the  witness  of  his  Spirit,  is  profoundly 
ethical ;  and  his  prophetic  discourses  concerning  the  im- 
pending judgments  and  the  end  of  the  world,  as  w^ell  as 
his  parables  of  the  increase  of  his  kingdom,  shovr  his 
reliance  upon  moral  forces,  and  his  knowledge  of  the  pro- 
found ethical  processes  through  Avhich  God's  will  is  to  be 
done  on  earth  as  in  heaven.  The  Lord's  prayer.  Thy  king- 
dom come,  is  a  prayer  of  moral  consecration  on  the  lips  of 
every  disciple  who  repeats  it  in  the  Master's  spirit,  and  who 
would  do  God's  will  on  earth.  The  catastrophes  which 
the  gospels  predict  are  primarily  ethical  ones ;  the  world-age 
to  come  is  to  be  preceded  by  a  moral  judgment ;  the  gospel 
is  to  pervade  humanity  as  a  moral  leaven ;  both  the  wdieat 
and  the  tares  are  to  grow  together  until  the  harvest.  Jesus 
had  taught  that  his  kingdom  was  already  present  when  he 
stood  among  men  in  the  power  of  the  Spirit  of  God.  And 
it  was  to  come  to  men  without  observation  as  they  should 
receive  his  Spirit.  The  law  of  its  progress  was  to  be  the 
law  of  a  spiritual  coming.  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is 
present  in  any  spiritual  presence  on  this  earth.  It  becomes 
real  in  the  Christian  spirit  of  a  society  or  a  nation.  Not 
through  the  restoration  of  any  sacred  treasures  of  a  buried 
past,  not  at  once  with  sudden  signs  from  heaven,  are  we  to 
look  for  the  promised  redemption  ^ ;  but  the  highest  good 
of  which  man  is  capable,  and  of  which  prophets  have 
dreamed,  is  to  be  realized  on  earth  through  the  gradual 
and  increasing  spiritualization  of  the  life  of  humanity.  In 
the  new  hearts  of  men,  in  the  better  spirit  of  the  laws,  and 
the  more  Christian  cast  of  the  social  institutions  of  the 
world,  we  are  to  discern  the  signs  of  the  growing  ful- 
filment of  the  prayer  which  the  Son  of  man  has  taught 
us  to  pray  to  the  Father  in  heaven,  "Thy  kingdom 
come." 

This  process  of  the  gradual  spiritualization  of  life  is  to 
be  conceived  as  a  purely  religious,  ethical  process ;  and  as 
such,  Jesus'  idea  of  the  method  through  which  man  is  to 
attain  to  the  ideal  ends  of  his  being,  differs  by  the  whole 

1  Cf .  Matt.  xxiv.  27  with  xiii.  30-33. 


108  •  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

diameter  of  the  ethical  idea  from  the  worldly  and  super- 
naturalistic  conceptions  which  were  becoming  current  amid 
the  later  spiritual  hopelessness  of  Judaism. 

The  New  Testament  ideal,  then,  of  the  highest  good,  so 
far  as  it  is  opened  to  our  analysis  of  it  in  Jesus'  preaching 
of  the  gospel  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  is  personal  and 
human,  yet  transcendent  and  spiritual ;  an  ideal  of  human- 
ity to  be  reached  through  ethical  processes,  to  become  real 
as  the  reign  of  love  and  the  moral  presence  of  God  on 
earth. 

II.  Jesus'  moral  ideal  is  presented  to  us  in  another  form 
in  his  saying,  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  that  men 
should  be  perfect  even  as  their  Father  which  is  in  heaven 
is  perfect. 

The  text  may  be  read  either  as  commandment  or  prom- 
ise;  and  in  either  case  it  is  one  of  .the  most  remarkable 
of  the  sayings  of  Jesus.  The  moral  originality  of  it  ap- 
pears at  a  glance  the  instant  we  conceive  of  this  single 
word  of  the  Lord  as  set  in  the  midst  of  the  thoughts 
of  the  ancient  philosophers,  or  try  to  read  it  into  the 
traditions  of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees.  We  need  to 
recall  the  scene  where  this  revelation  of  the  Christian 
ideal  for  men  was  first  given,  and  remember  to  what  peo- 
ple it  was  announced,  in  order  that  we  may  apprehend 
its  full  import,  and  appreciate  its  moral  origin ality.^  Had 
these  words  been  spoken  by  the  Master  at  some  moment 
of  moral  enthusiasm  only  to  a  few  choice  spirits,  they 
might  not  have  seemed  so  impossible.  But  the  multi- 
tudes listened,  astonished  at  his  teaching.^  No  wonder 
that  even  the  doctrine  of  Jesus  seemed  miraculous  to 
people  accustomed  to  the  words  of  the  scribes.  For  this 
is  the  moral  wonder  of  Jesus'  ideal  that  it  was  held  up  — • 
a  pure  commandment  and  promise  of  perfect  good  —  be- 
fore all  men's  eyes  ;  that  his  heavenly  ideal  of  man  was  not 
lowered  or  abated  before  any  publican  or  sinner. 

1  The  exegesis  of  Matt,  v.-vii.  fails  to  interpret  Christ's  thought  almost  in 
proportion  as  it  remains  critical.  Christ's  preaching  needs  to  be  translated 
into  sermonic  language,  aglow  with  present  experience  of  life. 

2  The  sermon  was  for  the  multitude,  although  Jesus  taught  directly  the 
disciples.    Cf.  Matt.  v.  1  with  vii.  28-29. 


CONTEXTS    OF   THE    CHRISTIAX   IDEAL  109 

The  Christian  Ideal  would  seem  remarkable  enough 
in  its  ap^Dlication  to  men,  had  the  word  of  the  Christ 
stopped  only  with  the  thought  of  some  possible  perfection 
for  them ;  but  it  becomes  more  significant  by  reason  of  the 
moral  rule  or  standard  of  perfection  which  is  immediately 
associated  with  the  commandment,  —  "As  your  heavenly 
Father  is  perfect."  ^  In  these  latter  words  we  find  revealed 
a  distinctive  sign  and  excellence  of  the  Christian  moral 
ideal.  It  is  an  absolute* ideal ;  no  law  can  be  more  imper- 
ative than  is  this  commandment  of  perfection.  Kant  did 
not  frame  a  categorical  maxim  of  duty  which  is  at  once  so 
simple,  so  universal,  and  so  authoritative  as  this  word  of 
Christ  to  the  people.  Moral  philosophy  can  reach  no 
more  exalted  or  comprehensive  generalization  of  duty. 
It  is  high  as  the  heavens.  It  is  pure  as  light.  Viewed  as 
the  general  form  of  the  moral  imperative,  nothing  can  be 
more  comprehensive.  Scientific  ethics  in  its  induction  of 
the  law  of  good  from  the  numberless  particulars  of  human 
relations,  can  find  no  larger  expression  for  its  generaliza- 
tion of  duty  as  the  highest  efficiency  of  the  whole  social 
organism  than  is  this  commandment  of  the  gospel,  —  Ye 
shall  be  perfect,  according  to  the  perfection  of  the  Creator 
of  all.  That  is  perfection  of  man  according  to  his  type,  in 
conformity  to  the  highest  idea  of  his  being,  for  his  original 
and  archetypal  being  is  divine  ;  and  such  fulfilment  of 
the  true  type  of  humanity  is  the  broadest  and  most  compre- 
hensive idea  of  the  good  which  any  scientific  generaliza- 
tion can  compass. 

While,  however,  this  commandment  yields  to  no  moral 
conception  as  an  abstract  form  for  duty,  or  universal 
maxim  of  conduct,  it  possesses  another  quality  which  such 
moral  generalizations  lack,  and  the  absence  of  which  renders 
them  comparatively  powerless  as  motives  in  conduct.  The 
added  words  of  Jesus  take  the  idea  of  perfection  out  of 
abstract  generality,  and  cold  legality,  and  inspire  his  com- 
mandment of  perfection  with  the  warmth  of  personality 
whose  life  is  to  be  realized  in  love.     For  this  is  no  un- 

1  See  also  Luke  vi.  36,  where  the  mercy  of  the  Father  is  made  the  standard 
of  human  mercy. 


110  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

human,  or  vague  philosophic  conception  of  the  Godhead 
with  which  Jesus  completes  his  moral  commandment. 
The  image  of  perfection  which  he  sets  immediately  before 
humanity  in  its  imperfection  is  not  impassive  law,  nor  is  it 
exaltation  even  of  divinity  in  its  unheeding  absoluteness 
and  awful  glory  of  self-completion.  The  Father,  and 
the  perfection  of  His  Fatherhood,  Jesus  brings  close  to 
man;  by  his  perfect  Fatherhood  man  shall  learn  at  once 
the  measure  of  his  duty  and  the  possibilities  of  his  moral 
sonship.  In  the  Fatlier's  likeness,  and  according  to  the 
Father's  manner  of  being  perfect,  ye  also  shall  be  perfect. 
The  nature  of  this  perfection  we  may  learn  as  we  seek  to 
apprehend  ethically  Jesus'  idea  of  God.  But  without 
anticipating  ourselves,  it  is  enough  to  remark  at  this 
point  that  the  context  of  the  teaching  in  v/hich  this  moral 
ideal  for  the  people  was  given,  brings  to  man  a  new  ethi- 
cal religious  truth,  opens  a  larger,  happier  revelation  of 
God  as  love.  The  Father  in  heaven,  in  whose  name  Jesus 
blessed  his  disciples,  is  not  perfect  as  law,  but  as  love  — 
perfect  in  love's  way  and  measure,  as  their  Father  who 
knows  what  they  need.  In  the  same  way,  by  the  same 
method,  men  are  to  seek  for  the  moral  end  of  their  being. 
The  one  thing  which  the  best  of  those  Jews,  the  most 
righteous  among  them,  had  not  learned,  and  which  no 
scribe  could  teach,  was  the  law  and  the  measure  of  perfec- 
tion through  love.  Jesus'  commandment  included  in  its 
requirement  of  perfection  a  method  also  of  its  possible  ful- 
filment;—  God's  Fatherhood  was  the  standard,  and  life 
like  the  Father's  in  love  should  be  the  method  of  its  reali- 
zation. As  it  is  presented  accordingly  in  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  Jesus'  ideal  good  for  men  is  not  only  a  conception 
of  some  absolute  worth  which  shall  command  us  in  the 
authority  of  duty ;  it  is  not  merely  the  exaltation  of  an 
idea  of  perfect  being  conforming  to  its  original  type  and 
harmonious  in  all  its  functions ;  it  is  not  some  vague  and 
vast  conception  of  ultimate  social  good,  which  shall  be 
attained  though  individuals  fail,  and  only  the  few  who 
survive  at  the  end  may  rejoice  in  it ;  it  is  the  ideal  of  the 
perfect  person,  and  the  perfect  life  which  is  the  open  pos- 


CONTENTS    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  111 

sibility  of  the  moral  universe  for  all  men;  the  ideal  for 
God's  children  which  has  its  revelation  and  its  attraction 
in  the  sure,  central  fact  of  God's  perfect  personality.  The 
Christian  Ideal,  according  to  this  teaching  of  Jesus,  is 
warm  and  vital  as  with  a  personal  love.  It  is  the  moral 
ideal  for  men  which  is  revealed  in  the  Fatherhood  of  God. 
III.  The  ideal  of  the  highest  good  receives  further 
interpretation  in  the  words  characteristic  of  Jesus'  teach- 
ing, '  life,'  '  eternal  life.' 

These  words  occur  in  the  earlier  sources  of  Matthew's  and  Luke's  gos- 
pels with  sufficient  frequency  to  indicate  that  they  must  often  have  been 
used  in  some  sense  by  Jesus.  That  their  peculiar  use  in  the  fourth  gos- 
pel reflects  an  aspect  of  Jesus'  original  teaching,  is  not  to  be  denied  sim- 
ply on  the  ground  that  it  is  characteristic  of  John :  on  the  contrary,  this 
is  to  be  assumed  not  only  from  the  general  evidence  of  an  original  apos- 
tolic source  of  the  fourth  gospel,  but  also  from  the  agreement  of  John's 
conception  of  eternal  life  with  the  whole  teaching  of  Jesus  as  recorded  by 
the  synoptists,  and  the  fitness  of  this  conception  to  explain  the  subsequent 
apostolic  development  of  the  idea  of  spiritual  life  with  Christ.  This  is  well 
argued  by  Wendt,  Die  Lehre  Jesu,  ii.  ss.  196  ff. 

Without  entering  into  the  question,  which  belongs  rather 
to  dogmatics,  whether  the  adjective,  eternal,  which  appears 
in  the  gospels  in  connection  with  the  substantive,  life,  in- 
volves or  not  of  itself  the  idea  of  everlasting  existence, 
we  observe  that  the  two  words  together  contain  a  moral 
positive,  and  are  meant  to  describe  the  highest  end  and 
fullest  conceivable  good  of  existence.  The  two  words,  as 
combined  in  the  gospels,  are  used  to  signify  life  at  its 
highest  power  and  in  its  completest  conceivable  realiza- 
tion. An  alternative  phrase,  which  occurs,  according  to 
an  approved  reading,  in  one  of  the  epistles  serves  to  bring 
out  clearly  this  moral  positive  in  the  gospel  conception 
of  eternal  life  :  "  That  they  may  lay  hold  on  the  life  which 
is  life  indeed."  i 

The  love  of  life  is  not  only  an  instinct  of  nature,  but  it 
possesses  moral  significance.  Give  us  life  —  more  life  and 
richer  —  life  of  wilder  scope  —  life  full  as  an  ocean-tide  — 
life  unbounded,  limitless,  free  ;  —  what  mortal  man  has  not 
felt  at  times  as  a  moral  passion  of  his  soul  this  hungering  and 

1 1  Tim.  vi.  19. 


112  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

thirsting  after  life  which  shall  be  life  indeed?  The  Chris- 
tian Ideal  does  not  ignore  nor  condemn,  nor  set  aside  as 
insignificant,  this  more  than  animal  passion  of  the  soul  for 
life.  Rather  it  takes  it  up,  expands  and  glorifies  it  in  its 
promise  of  the  eternal  life.  Our  earthly  task,  according 
to  Christian  ethics,  is  to  lay  hold  on  life.^  Life,  not  death, 
is  good. 

We  may  distinguish  more  particularly  certain  moral 
elements  which  are  contained  in  Jesus'  words,  "  eternal 
life,"  "  hath  eternal  life,"  "  hath  passed  out  of  death  into 
life."  2 

(1)  As  already  suggested  the  thought  is  plainly  involved 
in  these  expressions  that  life  is  a  good.  Personal  life  is  some- 
thing morally  to  be  desired.  Our  love  of  life  is  a  moral 
love  of  it.  Life,  Avhich  for  us,  and  in  our  consciousness  of 
it,  means  not  merely  existence,  but  continued  personal 
being,  is  itself  an  object  of  ethical  desire  :  it  is  a  good  will 
of  God  to  be  realized  in  the  preservation  of  his  children. 
In  a  certain  degree,  within  the  limits  of  created  being,  there 
has  been  imparted  to  the  moral  person  the  gift  of  hav- 
ing life  in  himself,  —  a  power  of  life  which  in  its  original 
and  creative  fulness  belongs  to  the  nature  of  the  Godhead.^ 
To  the  Son  who  represents  the  moral  creation  and  is  its 
end  and  fulness,  God  has  granted  this  power  of  having  life 
in  himself. 

Personal  life,  once  gained,  is  a  good  not  to  be  lost.  Life 
so  far  as  it  has  been  realized  in  conscious  personality  is  to 
be  preserved,  and,  if  morally  kept,  it  shall  not  fall  backwards 
down  the  scale  of  creation.  To  whatever  degree  life  has 
been  as  yet  realized  in  personality,  to  that  measure  of  at- 
tainment it  is  to  be  held  up ;  it  is  not  to  be  suffered  to 
lapse,  to  fall  below  itself,  to  sink  from  the  plane  of  person- 
ality to  the  level  of  the  mere  existence  from  which  it  has 
been  uplifted  into  self-consciousness.  Life,  personal  life, 
is  to  be  regarded  as  an  achievement  of  spirit,  itself  the  at- 
tainment of  a  creative  end  of  being.  And  this  achieve- 
ment of  the  spirit  is  to  be  preserved  in  the  final  good.* 

1 1  Tim.  vi.  12.  2  Matt.  xxv.  46;  John  xvii.  3  ;  vi.  54 ;  v.  24. 

8  John  V.  26.  ^  Luke  xxi.  19 ;  the  soul  is  to  be  won. 


CONTENTS   OF    THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  113 

There  may  be  still  higher  possibilities  of  life  unknown  to 
us  through  any  earthly  experience ;  but  this  sure  and 
supreme  good  of  our  spiritual  experience  of  life,  which  has 
been  reached  and  won  at  the  height  of  the  creation  to 
which  we  have  been  exalted,  is  in  its  nature  an  eternal 
good ;  —  the  Christian  ideal  may  be  contained  in  these  two 
words,  eternal  life.  And  in  fulfilment  of  the  continual 
prophecy  of  life  from  its  first  stirring  in  matter,  and  of  the 
whole  struggle  and  ascent  of  life  upwards,  the  Christ 
might  say,  "  I  came  that  they  may  have  life,  and  may  have 
it  abundantly."  ^ 

(2)  The  promise  of  life  contains  also,  as  an  element  in 
the  Christian  conception  of  the  highest  good,  the  hope  of 
life  as  a  good  to  be  delivered  from  evil.  The  Christian 
moral  ideal  is  opposed  to  death  and  the  dominion  of  death. 
Life,  which  is  good  in  itself,  shall  be  delivered  from  the 
power  of  the  evil.  Freedom  from  pain  and  death,  the  pres- 
ent enemies  of  life,  —  an  ultimate  emancipation  of  life  from 
the  grasp  of  anything  unfriendly  to  it,  —  is  involved  in  the 
very  idea  of  life  as  a  good  in  itself ;  that  idea  requires  the 
hope  of  deliverance  from  the  law  of  death  which  obtains  in 
nature  up  to  man,  but  which,  so  far  as  it  has  gained  power 
over  man,  seems  to  be  a  denial  of  the  good  of  wdiich  he  has 
become  conscious,  and  an  inexplicable  contradiction  of  the 
freedom  of  his  will.  According  to  these  brief  gospel 
phrases,  "  eternal  life,"  "  life  indeed,"  the  Christian  Ideal  of 
the  good  is  an  assurance  of  the  final  ascent  of  life  above 
the  lower  dominion  of  death ;  it  is  the  assertion  that  the 
law  of  life  is  superior  to  the  law  of  death  ;  that  life,  and 
not  death,  is  lord  in  the  realm  of  moral  personality;  that 
moral  good  shall  be  held  finally  in  no  dependent  and  fear- 
ful existence  which  the  least  thing  in  nature  ma}^  wound, 
and  a  mere  breath  ma}^  destroy ;  but  it  is  to  be  realized  in 
spiritual  independence  of  suffering  and  some  future  pos- 
session of  being  above  all  possible  reach  or  thought  of 
death.2 

(3)  The  idea  of  eternal  life  which  appears  in  the  gospels 
is  brought  into  close  relation  to  the  further  idea  of  spiritual 

1  John  X.  10.  2  John  vi.  50 ;  Rom.  vi.  8-9 ;  1  Cor.  xv.  22-58. 


114  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

renewal.  It  is  life  not  only  redeemed  from  evil,  but  a 
new  life  proceeding  from  a  birth  of  the  Spirit.^  Hence, 
as  we  shall  have  to  notice  more  particularly  in  subsequent 
discussions,  the  truth  of  a  salvation  from  evil  to  newness 
of  life,  enters  into  and  colors  the  whole  Christian  concep- 
tion of  the  highest  good. 

(4)  The  Christian  Ideal,  as  eternal  life,  involves  still 
further  a  positive  conception  of  life  as  the  fulness  and 
completeness  of  personal  relationships. 

There  is  a  vast  difference  between  mere  existence  and 
life.  A  tree  exists  in  the  winter ;  it  lives  in  every  leafy 
bough  of  it  in  the  month  of  June.  The  New  Testament 
conception  of  eternal  life  is  existence  .  in  its  full  blossom 
and  fruitfulness.  The  prospect  of  life  which  Jesus  held 
before  the  faith  of  his  disciples  was  no  colorless  promise, 
no  unsubstantial  and  meaningless  hope  of  far-off  felicity. 
He  revealed  life  in  its  fulness  and  fruition.  The  idea  of 
the  completion  of  all  the  familiar  good  of  personal  rela- 
tionships gives  glow  and  home-like  cheer  to  the  Christian's 
hope  of  eternal  life.  The  supreme  good  is  no  philosophic 
life  of  pale  contemplation,  or  loss  of  personal  consciousness 
in  some  infinite  passiveness  of  being;  it  is  living  at  its 
highest,  intensest,  and  fullest,  in  all  that  makes  life  worth 
living.  The  eternal  life,  which  is  the  highest  good,  is  life 
quickened  in  all  the  powers  of  one's  being,  and  entering 
with  ever  fresh  and  quick  responsiveness  into  the  personal 
relationships  in  which  our  humanity  is  realized.  The 
highest  good,  in  the  Christian  conception  of  it,  becomes 
thus  in  one  word  intensely  vital.  It  is  being,  moral  being, 
personality,  vitalized  to  the  utmost. 

That  such  was  Jesus'  thought  of  the  eternal  life  appears 
from  the  words  which  he  used  in  connection  with  his 
promises  to  his  disciples.  His  descriptive  words  concern- 
ing the  life  which  he  had  come  to  give  abundantly,  are 
not  borrowed  from  the  splendors  of  material  things.  He 
has  little  or  nothing  to  say  of  thrones,  and  riches,  and  spa- 
cious mansions,  and  a  city  of  golden  resplendence  ;  these 
common   and   material   images   of   future   felicity   rarely 

1  Cf.  John  iii.  3,  with  iii.  15. 


CONTENTS   OF    THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  115 

occur,  or  are  touched  only  by  a  passing  \Yorcl  in  the  Lord's 
speech  concerning  the  heaven  from  which  he  came,  and 
in  which  his  heart  ahvays  dwelt.  But  when  he  would 
prepare  his  own  for  his  absence  for  time's  "  little  while  " 
from  them,  he  drops  entirely  the  splendid  imagery  in 
which  the  prophets  had  conceived  of  the  future  glory  of 
Zion ;  Jesus  uses  the  simplest,  most  personal  words  as  his 
words  of  promise ;  he  chooses  vital  things  as  the  signs  of 
his  presence  ;  he  describes  the  life  into  which  he  should 
ascend,  and  in  which  they  too  were  to  have  part,  in  the 
terms  of  personal  companionship.  These  relations  of  living 
friendship  and  communion  constitute  heaven's  supreme 
good;  in  these  relationships  of  most  worth  to  human 
hearts  its  final  felicity  shall  be  made  perfect :  "  Because 
I  live,  ye  shall  live  also  "  ;  "  And  again  a  little  while,  and 
ye  shall  see  me  "  ;  "I  go  unto  the  Father  "  ;  " Even  as  the 
Father  hath  loved  me,  I  also  have  loved  you";  "I  in  them, 
and  thou  in  me,  that  they  may  be  perfected  into  one.''^ 
So  Jesus  makes,  not  all  manner  of  precious  stones,  but  the 
personal  pronouns,  his  symbols  of  heaven.  The  commun- 
ion of  chosen  and  consecrated  friends,  for  whom  the  Mas- 
ter blessed  the  wine  of  life,  is  the  prophetic  picture,  which 
our  Lord  has  given  us,  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  when  he 
shall  come  again  .^ 

This  positive  content  of  Jesus'  idea  of  the  highest  moral 
good  as  the  perfectness  of  personal  life  in  the  communion 
of  men  with  God,  and  with  one  another  in  God's  light, 
surpasses  imagination,  yet  it  comes  close  home  to  human 
hearts  ;  though  it  is  the  ideal  of  a  transcendent  perfectness, 
it  is  at  the  same  time  real  and  near  as  the  simplest  relation- 
ship of  love  in  which  a  man  may  now  find  his  truest  and 
best  life. 

The  moral  advantage  of  this  Christian  Ideal  is  that  it 
enables  us  to  lay  hold  of  the  surpassing  thought  of  perfec- 
tion by  those  elements  in  our  experience  which  are  now  most 
real  and  of  known  worth  to  us.  This  is  a  positive  human 
conception  of  good,  though  supernal,  which  is  brought  to 
us  in  the  promise  of  eternal  life.     An  image  of  it  near,  and 

1  John  xiv.-xvii.  2  ^Isctt.  xx^i.  29. 


116  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

real,  and  true,  may  be  found  in  the  human  home.  In 
Christian  ethics  the  home  becomes  itself  image  and  type  of 
the  highest  good,  the  sign  of  heaven  on  earth. 

One  may  look  in  vain  in  all  other  ethics,  ancient  or  mod- 
jern,  for  a  conception  of  the  supreme  good  so  vital,  so  human, 
so  home-like  as  this.  Nowhere  has  life  been  so  thoroughly, 
broadly,  and  transcendently,  yet  humanly  conceived  as  in 
itself  and  its  completion  the  very  essence  and  substance  of 
the  good. 

(5)  This  ideal  of  the  eternal  life  as  the  fulness  and  per- 
fectness  of  j)ersonal  good  involves  necessarily  as  tributary 
to  it,  or  as  elements  in  which  it  shall  realize  itself,  the 
moral  ideas  of  holiness,  righteousness,  benevolence,  love. 
But  it  contains  more  than  any  of  these  words  alone  may 
express ;  it  is  the  substantive  of  which  they  are  the  predi- 
cates ;  it  is  that  fulness  and  positiveness  of  good  in  which 
all  these  moral  elements  consist ;  for  it  is  a  living  good,  a 
living  perfectness,  a  living  harmony  of  being;  it  is  life, 
conscious,  complete,  personal,  in  the  communion  of  life. 
The  nearest  approach  which  can  be  made  to  a  definition  of 
it  is  contained  in  that  profound  word  of  Jesus  by  which 
life  is  described  as  a  knowing  God ;  — "  And  this  is  life 
eternal,  that  they  should  know  thee  the  only  true  God, 
and  him  whom  thou  didst  send,  even  Jesus  Christ."  ^ 
Life  is  knowing  —  not  a  knowledge  of  things  merely, 
not  a  science  of  the  creation ;  —  to  master  and  possess 
a  science  is  not  to  live ;  —  life,  eternal  life,  is  a  jcerson^? 
knowing  the  only  true  God,  and  Him  in  whom  man  and 
God  are  one.  And  this  thought,  which  was  always  in  the 
mind  of  Jesus,  of  the  true  life  in  oneness  with  God, 
finds  reflection  in  the  words  of  the  beloved  disciple  :  "  This 
is  the  true  God,  and  eternal  life.  My  little  children,  guard 
yourselves  from  idols."  ^  In  comparison  with  this  know- 
ing the  true  God,  and  eternal  life,  all  other  knowledge  is 
idolatry ;  all  other  goods  which  are  not  possessed  as  parts 
and  elements  of  this  supreme  good  are  idols. 

1  John  xvii.  3.  Wendt  argues  that  by  these  words  Jesus  does  not  declare 
in  what  the  eternal  life  consists,  but  in  what  lies  the  means  to  win  it,  Lehre 
Jesn,  ii.  s.  190,  But  the  words,  "This  is,"  etc.,  imply  something  concerning 
the  nature  of  the  life.    See  Weiss,  opus  cit.  §.  208.  -  1  John  v.  20-21. 


CONTENTS    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  117 

(6)  In  this  conception  of  the  highest  good  as  eternal  life, 
is  involved  also  the  idea  of  it  as  in  part  a  present  reality 
and  an  immediate  possession. 

This  conception  of  eternal  life  as  a  present  life  of  faith,  seems  peculiar 
to  the  fourth  gospel.  While  the  other  disciples  understood  Christ  to  say 
that  the  righteous  shall  go  into  eternal  life  (Matt.  xxv.  46),  John  remem- 
bers that  the  Master  had  likewise  spoken  of  the  believer  as  one  who  hath 
eternal  life,  who  is  passed  from  death  unto  life  (John  iii.  30 ;  v.  24) . 
The  synoptists,  however,  represent  Jesus  as  teaching  that  the  kingdom  of 
God  is  in  part  already  come  (Luke  xvii.  21):  similarly  John  speaks  of 
the  eternal  life,  which,  in  his  conception  of  salvation,  had  taken  almost 
entirely  the  place  of  the  idea  of  the  kingdom.  See  Weiss,  opus  cit. 
s.  208  (a). 

We  may  have  the  eternal  good  in  some  measure  of  it 
in  time.  We  do  not  yet  possess  it  completely,  nor  in  its 
moral  perfectness  above  all  touch  of  evil  and  possibility 
of  loss ;  but  we  may  have  it  now,  and  have  it  really, 
though  not  fully ;  we  may  have  it  as  we  have  love,  not 
in  its  whole  purity  and  power,  yet  in  some  living  and 
growing  truth  of  it.  In  Christian  ethics  the  ideal  good 
is  not,  as  sometimes  men  have  erroneously  supposed,  a 
distant  felicity  only  —  some  crown  of  happiness  hereafter 
to  be  received;  but  it  is  a  life  which  is  already  life 
indeed,  —  a  true,  and  eternal  kind  of  life  to  be  begun 
now  in  the  truth  and  worth  of  all  pure  personal  relation- 
ships, to  be  kept  alike  in  the  joy  and  through  the  sorrow 
which  falls  upon  love,  and  to  be  made  perfect  in  the  com- 
pletions of  futurity. 

We  do  not,  therefore,  fall  into  a  contradiction  of  speech, 
or  use  a  meaningless  phrase,  when  we  say  that  we  may 
have  now  eternal  life.  A  man  has  entered  into  the  eter- 
nal life  so  far  as  he  possesses  the  love  which  constitutes 
its  essential  good ;  a  man  falls  out  of  the  eternal  life  when 
he  falls  from  love,  and  enters  into  hate  which  is  the  denial 
of  all  good.  Through  hate  we  pass  under  the  dominion 
of  death ;  in  love  we  pass  into  a  life  of  eternal  possibili- 
ties, which  is  in  its  own  good  of  an  eternal  nature,  as  the 
true  God,  who  is  love,  is  from  everlastinof  to  everlastincr. 
Thomas  Erskine  gave  striking  expression  to  this  truth 
when  he  wrote :  "  Eternal  life   is   living   in    the    love   of 


118  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

God ;  eternal  death  is  living  in  self ;  so  that  a  man  may 
be  in  eternal  life  or  eternal  death  for  ten  minutes,  as  he 
changes  from  the  one  state  to  the  other."  ^ 

In  other  words,  the  positive  ethical  content  of  Jesus' 
-word,  eternal  life,  is  not  the  time-element,  but  the  personal 
element  of  life :  —  eternal  life  consists,  in  its  essential 
content,  in  knowing  God  Avho  is  love.^  And  this  in  part 
may  be  a  present  knowledge.  We  need  not  wait  for 
death  to  know  wliat  true  life  is ;  we  have  not  to  pass 
through  some  mystery  of  bodily  change  before  we  can 
begin  to  live  with  our  fellow-men  and  unto  God  in  that 
relationship  of  love  which  is  already  true  life,  and  as  such 
is  eternal  in  its  good. 

The  time-element  in  this  conception  of  eternal  life  does  not  belong  to 
its  positive  ethical  contents,  but  it  may  to  its  metaphysical  conditions. 
Finite  moral  life  may  possibly  never  become  wholly  independent  of  a 
metaphysical  condition  of  succession.  Time  may  always  be  for  finite 
persons  the  necessary  form  for  the  realization  of  that  eternal  life  which 
consists  in  love.  Yet  in  true  life  we  even  now  grow  conscious  of  a  cer- 
tain relative  independence  of  time.  AVe  subordinate  the  element  of 
time  to  the  life  itself,  and  almost  at  times  forget  time.  Life  in  its  high- 
est spiritual  intensity  becomes  a  certain  unconsciousness  of  time.  We 
triumph  over  the  years  in  memory  ;  we  leap  over  the  succession  of  events 
in  hope ;  love  needs  no  dates,  but  is  an  ever  present  reality.  Time  is 
relative  to  the  thinking  mind  ;  we  do  not  live  always  by  our  watches, 
but  often  by  our  thoughts.  The  hours  become  as  moments  in  intense 
thought ;  or  to  anxious  love  the  moments  may  become  as  hours,  and 
time  in  turn  gain  overpowering  mastery.  While  our  experience  which 
lies  now  wholly  in  the  order  of  time,  does  not  enable  us  indeed  to  con- 
ceive positively  of  a  spiritual  manner  of  existence  which  shall  be  wholly 
raised  out  of  time,  and  be  timeless  life  ;  yet  our  present  limited  indepen- 
dence of  time,  our  power  to  make  our  own  time  in  thought,  is  sufficient 
to  suggest  that  some  future,  higher  mode  of  spiritual  perfectness  may 
become  possible  to  us,  which  shall  be  far  more  independent  of  the  flight  of 
the  stars,  and  not  be  bound  in  necessity  so  limiting,  and  often  so  impatiently 
felt  by  us,  to  the  order  of  outward  successions.  Though  we  must  remain 
always  finite,  we  may  become  more  Godlike  in  greater  spiritual  indepen- 
dence of  temporal  successions. 

(7)  In  Jesus'  thought  of  the  highest  good  as  eternal 
life  there  is  involved  also  the  conception  of  blessedness  as 
its  element  and  atmosphere. ^     The  true  life  does  not  con- 

1  Letters,  p.  425.  2  John  xvii.  3;  1  John  v.  20. 

3  The  promise  of  rewards  appears  more  prominently  in  the  earlier  sources 
than  in  the  fourth  gospel:  Matt.  v.  12;  xix.  29;  Mark  x.  30;  Luke  xviii.  30; 
but  John  notices  the  joy  and  peace  of  the  life  of  Christ :  xiv.  27 ;  xv.  11. 


CONTENTS    OF   THE    CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  119 

sist  in  the  happiness  of  it,  yet  it  is  not  to  be  conceived 
as  realized  without  happiness.  Blessedness  is  both  its 
natural  result  and  its  necessary  form  of  existence.  Happi- 
ness is  not  the  material  but  the  formal  nature  of  the 
true,  the  eternal  life.  In  proportion  as  the  true  life 
is  lived  by  any  moral  being,  in  that  proportion  it  brings 
happiness,  and  creates  an  atmosphere  of  joy;  in  propor- 
tion as  the  true  life  shall  be  lived  throughout  the  moral 
universe,  will  the  conditions  which  occasion  unhappiness 
disappear.  The  two  conceptions,  eternal  life  and  blessed- 
ness, belong  together,  and  are  necessary  each  to  the  other, 
as  matter  and  form ;  as  being  and  the  element  in  which 
being  exists ;  or  as  light  and  ethereal  motion.  God,  the 
good,  is  over  all,  God  blessed  forever. 

Nothing  has  worked  more  moral  harm  in  religion  than 
false  ideas  of  this  relation  and  unity,  as  of  matter  and 
form,  between  true  life  and  its  happiness.  If  the  good  be 
held  apart  from  all  thought  of  happiness  as  in  itself  above 
all  to  be  desired,  without  regard  to  the  conditions  under 
which  it  may  find  its  perfect  realization,  then  a  false 
asceticism  may  result,  and  an  unnatural  divorce  of  hajDpi- 
ness  from  the  moral  ideal  avenges  itself  always  in  a 
loss  of  some  virtues  of  the  true  life.  Character  was  not 
made  to  grow  in  a  vacuum,  but  in  a  sunny  air.  The  en- 
deavor to  rise  above  all  thought  of  happiness  in  morals 
Quds  in  a  fall  from  the  full  idea  of  moral  manhood  in  the 
world.  The  idle  cloistered  saint,  the  unclean  and  uncom- 
fortable monk,  the  soul  whose  moral  life  has  been  stunted 
and  starved  in  the  midst  of  human  relations  which  are 
good,  is  the  offspring  of  this  illicit  sundering  of  the  ideas 
of  virtue  and  happiness.  On  the  other  hand,  nothing  can 
be  more  morally  enervating  and  deadening  in  religion 
than  a  pursuit  of  heaven  for  its  supposed  reward,  or 
from  the  desire  merely  to  escape  hell-fire.  Jesus,  while 
on  earth,  had  occasion  to  rebuke  those  who  sought  him 
for  the  sake  of  the  loaves  and  the  fishes ;  the  disposi- 
tion would  be  as  reprehensible  in  the  disciples  if  they 
should  seek  the  Christ  for  the  sake  of  the  heavenly  loaves 
and  fishes.     To  be  religious  for  the  purpose  of  gras]3ing 


120  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

some  future  re^\ard  while  holding  on  as  tightly  as  possi- 
ble to  present  happiness,  would  prove  disastrous,  both 
here  and  there,  to  the  life  of  love  which  is  the  eternal  life. 
Other-world  selfishness  deserves  all  the  satire  with  which 
it  has  been  visited  by  the  scientific  moralists. 

A  healthful  and  sound  Christian  consciousness  does  not 
neoflect  or  confound  either  of  these  elements  of  the  true, 
or  eternal  kind  of  life.  It  consists  in  perfectness  of  being, 
and  it  is  moral  perfectness  rejoicing  in  the  sunshine  of 
God's  presence.  It  is  essentially  virtue  according  to  the 
image  of  Christ;  and  with  Christ  it  ascends,  as  to  its 
native  element,  into  heaven.  The  blessing  cannot  be 
realized  without  the  virtue  :  as  the  sunshine  could  not  be 
seen  except  by  tlie  eye  open  to  its  beams.  Scientific 
morality  least  of  all  should  find  any  difficulty  or  reproach 
in  this  correlation  in  the  Christian  Ideal  of  perfect  being 
and  final  blessedness;  for  it  is  only  carrying  out  to  full 
fruition  the  truth,  which  runs  through  and  through  the 
whole  evolutionary  conception  of  the  universe,  of  the 
adaptation  of  being  to  its  favoring  conditions,  and  the  reign 
of  each  successive  species  in  its  fitting  environment.  The 
Christian  doctrine  of  heaven,  in  its  conception  of  virtue 
and  happiness,  is  the  scientific  evolutionary  optimism  car- 
ried out  to  the  last  and  highest  survival  of  moral  being  in 
its  consummate  blessedness. 

Thus  far  we  have  been  studying  the  Christian  Ideal 
of  the  supreme  good  to  be  desired  as  it  lies  evidently 
before  us  in  certain  words  of  the  gospels.  But  the  ideal 
which  shines  from  the  gospels  is  not  in  word  onlj^  but  in 
power.  It  is  given  to  us  not  in  the  doctrine  only  of 
Jesus,  but  in  liis  character. 

IV.  The  Christian  Ideal  is  Jesus  himself  as  he  was 
known  on  earth  by  those  who  were  eye-witnesses  of  hii 
glory,  and  as  he  has  been  glorified  through  his  Spirit  in 
the  adoration  of  his  Church. 

In  order  to  perceive  this  moral  ideul  in  its  personal 
revelation  in  Christ  we  do  not  need  to  borrow  from  the 
theology  of  the  Church  that  careful  doctrine  of  his  person 
which   was  embodied  as  the  result  of  three  centuries  of 


CONTENTS    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  121 

thought  in  the  Nicene  creed.  It  is  enough  if  we  can  draw 
near  the  humanly  divine  character  which  dwelt  with  men, 
—  separate  from  all  their  sinfulness,  and  full  of  grace  and 
truth, —  of  which  the  disciples  were  eye-witnesses.  Jesus 
himself,  coming  from  the  Father  and  going  to  the  Father, 
living  while  on  earth  as  one  in  heaven,^ — known  on 
earth  by  disciples  whose  lives  were  transformed  by  their 
knowledge  of  him,  and  manifested  in  the  Spirit  to  succeed- 
ing generations  as  theLord  and  Saviour  of  men  —  winning 
ever  as  of  old  the  first  affections  of  childhood's  innocence, 
commanding  the  passions  of  men,  and  followed  by 
woman's  utmost  devotion  —  Jesus  himself  is  the  ideal  of 
Christian  history;  he  is  the  Light,  itself  unequalled  and 
unexplained,  whose  luminous  mystery  of  divinity,  shining 
full  in  the  thought  of  the  world,  makes  all  lesser  mysteries 
of  our  mortality  become  bright  as  with  the  presence  of 
God.  The  personal  ideal  of  the  perfect  life  was  re- 
vealed indeed  in  the  Christ  under  historical  conditions 
and  within  the  limitations  of  time  and  space.  The  his- 
torical Christ  must  appear  at  a  definite  place  and  time. 
He  must  work  the  works  of  God  on  a  single  field  and 
among  a  chosen  people.  He  must  needs  suffer  on  earth, 
and  die  as  a  man,  before  he  can  rise,  and  ascend,  and  come 
again  as  the  Lord  from  heaven.  Amid  these  earthly  limi- 
tations, and  under  these  historical  conditions,  "  the  Light 
which  lighteth  every  man,  coming  into  the  world,"  was 
revealed,  and  the  Highest  Good  gave  itself  as  example 
and  law  of  our  life ;  but  once  revealed,  it  abides  as  the  in- 
spiration of  goodness  in  men.  The  influence  of  Jesus  is 
a  perpetual  influence  ;  in  His  Name  is  named  whatever  is 
most  worthy  our  consecration  of  power,  our  devotion  of 
heart,  our  endless  endeavor  of  life. 

Yet  because  the  Christian  ethical  ideal  is  thus  personally 
realized  in  Christ,  and  personally  operative  in  the  Spirit  of 
Christ,  for  this  very  reason  it  does  not  admit  of  complete 
definition,  nor  can  those  who  see  it  most  purely,  or  whose 
lives  imitate  it  most  powerfully,  express  or  describe  it  to 
others  in  any  adequate  form  of  words.     For  there  must 

1  John  iii.  13. 


122  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

always  be  something  beyond  definition  in  personal  life  and 
its  virtue.  No  rich  personality  has  ever  put  itself  wholly 
into  speech.  In  personal  love  and  influence  there  is 
always  more  of  the  Spirit  than  has  been  measured,  waiting 
to  be  revealed.  Of  the  supreme  Life  and  the  virtue  wdiich 
went  out  from  it,  we  must  still  say,  as  St.  Hilary  wrote  of 
old,  ''  We  are  constrained  to  extend  the  lowliness  of  our 
human  speech  to  things  which  are  inexpressible ;  so  that 
what  should  be  kept  in  devout  contemplation  is  brought 
to  the  peril  of  human  utterance."  ^ 

Thus  the  Christian  Ideal,  which  was  incarnate  in  the 
Person  of  the  Christ,  goes  ever  before  his  Church,  in 
fulness  of  life  and  spiritual  splendor,  as  the  glory  of  the 
Lord  still  to  be  revealed  in  his  future  coming,  surpassing 
the  hope  of  the  apostles,  the  joy  of  the  martyrs,  the  vision 
of  the  saints.  The  Christ  in  the  spiritual  consciousness  of 
the  Church,  loved,  dreamed  of,  followed,  worshipped,  hoped 
for  as  the  final  and  full  revelation  of  the  glory  of  God, 
appears  even  greater  and  more  divine  than  the  Jesus  whom 
disciples  knew  and  followed  on  earth ;  —  an  apostle  could 
say,  "  Even  though  we  have  known  Christ  after  the  flesh, 
yet  now  we  know  him  so  no  more."  ^  The  Christian 
Ideal  in  its  still  unrealized  and  inexpressible  glory  and 
transcendence  is  the  Christ  known  after  the  Spirit.  Our 
ideal  is  the  Christ  sitting  at  the  right  hand  of  the  Majesty 
on  high. 

Such  being  in  general  the  Christian  Ideal  in  its  historical 
revelation,  we  pass  next  to  a  description  of  three  of  the 
more  important  characteristics  of  its  contents  which  are  to 
be  observed  in  the  Christian  consciousness.  The  Christian 
Ideal,  in  these  aspects  of  it,  may  then  be  compared  with 
moral  ideals  which  have  been  gained  independently  of 
Christianity,  or  which  spring  up  on  the  borders  of  the 
influence  of  Christian  ideas. 

1  De  Trin.  ii.  2.  22  Cor.  v.  16. 


CONTEXTS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  123 


11.     THE   IDEAL  IX   THE   CHRISTIAX   COXSCIOUSXESS 

I.  The  Christian  Ideal  which  has  been  historicaUy  given 
in  Christ,  as  it  is  to  be  found  in  the  spiritual  conscious- 
ness of  Christians,  is  an  absolute  ideal. 

There  is  nothing  higher,  nothing  so  commanding.  It 
is  the  absolute  moral  imperative  of  Christian  character. 
"  But  if  any  man,"  said  an  apostle,  realizing  the  absolute 
inward  law  of  the  righteousness  of  Christ,  "  hath  not  the 
Spirit  of  Christ,  he  is  none  of  his."  ^  All  that  Kant  sought 
to  secure  for  morality  in  the  abstract  categorical  imperative 
of  the  law  is  won  for  the  Christian  consciousness  in  the 
living  imperative  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ.  This  moral  ab- 
soluteness of  the  Christian  Ideal  is  not,  however,  a  philo- 
sophic distillation  of  the  essence  of  all  morality  into  some 
single,  general  maxim,  like  Kant's  categorical  imperative. 
The  Christian  law  has  indeed  its  unsurpassable  golden  rule ; 
yet  Christian  morality  is  not  to  be  reduced  to  any  general 
formula  of  conduct,  however  excellent ;  for  the  Christian 
law  is  a  living  commandment,  a  law  of  the  Spirit  to  the 
spirit  of  man.2     As  such  it  has  an  absolute  authority. 

This  unconditional  imperative  of  the  Christian  Ideal 
within  the  soul  manifests  itself  both  in  the  absolute  quality 
of  character  which  it  requires,  and  the  absolute  idea  of 
conduct  which  it  introduces.  It  is  an  absolute  Be  this, 
and  also  an  absolute  Bo  this. 

1.  The  absolute  quality  of  the  Christian  Ideal  of  charac- 
ter is  holiness.  The  Old  Testament  idea  of  holiness  springs 
from  the  conception  of  a  Being  who  exists  apart  from  the 
evil  and  the  passion  of  this  world.  The  Holy  One  of 
Israel  is  the  only  true  God  who  is  separate  from  the 
world  and  its  evil,  as  the  gods  of  the  heathen  in  the  popu- 
lar mythologies  had  not  been  kept  pure  from  the  passions 
and  the  sins  of  mortals,  but  had  often  been  conceived  of 
as  immersed  in  the  sensuousness  of  the  world,  and  even 
bound  up  in  its  fate.  Jehovah,  the  Holy  One  of  Israel, 
is  the  exalted   Lord  who  dwells  in  the  highest  heavens, 

1  Rom.  viii.  9.  2  Rom.  viii.  2. 


124  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

self-contained  and  almighty,  perfect  and  wanting  nothing 
in  his  own  majesty  and  power.  Holiness  is  the  spiritual 
transcendence  of  God.  It  signifies  the  very  godhead  of 
the  Deity. 

-  But  sacredness,  or  apartness  of  life  from  evil,  while  it  is 
a  primary  element  of  holiness,  does  not  fill  out  the  whole 
Old  Testament  conception  of  the  Holy  One  of  Israel. 
Holiness  does  not  remain  a  negative  and  fruitless  idea  in 
the  religion  of  Israel,  as  the  abstract  idea  of  a  passionless 
good  remained  morally  inoperative  and  inert  in  the  phi- 
losphy  of  Greece.  The  idea  of  the  divine  holiness  became 
a  purifying  and  consecrating  power  in  the  religious  thought 
and  moral  conduct  of  the  people  of  Israel  who  felt  them- 
selves called  to  be  a  holy  nation,  even  as  the  Lord  their  God 
was  holy.i  Their  thought  of  holiness  was  not  simply  a  con- 
ception of  pure  Being  dwelling  apart  in  some  unapproachable 
light,  but  also  the  consciousness  of  a  present  and  peculiarly 
sacred  covenant  relation  of  Jehovah  with  his  people,  any 
violation  of  which  on  their  part  was  condemned  as  the 
sin  of  national  adultery.  The  holiness  of  the  Lord  their 
God  in  its  revelation  to  lawgiver  and  prophet,  was  a  pure 
will  of  God  to  be  done  on  the  earth. 

2.  With  this  positive  conception  of  holiness  at  the  heart 
of  the  true  religion  there  sprang  up  also  the  passion  for 
righteousness  which  flames  and  glows  in  the  prophets, 
and  which  even  in  its  later  rigid  congealment  in  Juda- 
ism became  the  moral  firmness  of  the  nation. 

The  absolute  moral  quality  of  being,  or  holiness,  requires 
as  its  expression,  or  outward  consequence,  an  absolute 
moral  worthiness  in  conduct,  or  righteousness .^  The  word 
right,  in  its  root  idea  in  the  Old  Testament,  runs  back  into 
the  idea  of  physical  straightness  ;  to  walk  in  righteousness  is 
to  walk  in  straight  paths.  Righteousness  is  moral  straight- 
forwardness. Straightness  or  rightness  of  conduct  imj)lies 
some  rule  by  which  conduct  is  to  be  measured ;  the  word 
righteousness  in  the  Old  Testament  seems  to  have  con- 
tained the  moral  conception  of  conformity  to  some  norm  ;  it 

1  Deut.  xiv.  2,  21 ;  JLev.  xi.  44-45 ;  xvii -xxvi.,  —  the  "  Law  of  Holiness." 

2  See  Is.  V.  IG. 


CONTENTS    OF   THE    CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  125 

was  a  forensic  term ;  indeed,  in  the  earlier  conception  of  it 
righteousness  was  "  not  so  much  a  moral  quality  as  a  legal 
status."  ^  This  rule  of  righteousness  the  Hebrew  man  found 
in  the  law  of  God.  Righteousness  became  synonymous 
with  obedience  to  the  law  of  the  Lord.  The  conception  of 
this  law  of  righteousness  grew  more  ethical  and  spiritual 
in  the  prophetic  consciousness  of  religion;  and  we  have  seen 
also  how  it  passed  in  later  times  into  the  external  and 
oppressive  legalism  of  the  scribes  ;  but  the  original  con- 
ception of  a  law  of  conduct  was  not  lost;  it  was  cleared 
of  the  overgrowth  of  baneful  observances,  and  thor- 
oughly ethicized,  in  the  Christian  Ideal  of  righteousness. 

In  the  New  Testament  righteousness  is  still  an  absolute 
law  of  life  ;  but  it  is  a  righteousness  whose  measure  and 
rule  is  to  be  found  in  no  merely  external  authority  and  in 
no  maxim  of  the  scribes  ;  its  law  is  inward  and  spiritual, 
for  it  is  the  righteousness  of  faith  in  Clirist.  The  Christian 
rule  of  conduct  is  the  perfect  Character.  The  standard 
of  righteousness  by  which  conduct  is  to  be  made  straight, 
and  in  comparison  with  which  conduct  shall  be  finally 
judged,  is  the  law  of  the  Spirit  within  the  heart.  Hence 
the  attainment  of  Christian  righteousness,  amid  the  change- 
ful moral  relations  of  a  human  life,  becomes  no  more  a  ser- 
vile act  of  obedience  as  to  some  foreign  rule,  but  is  a  free 
and  glad  fulfilment  of  love  in  the  spirit  of  a  son  in  the 
Father's  house.  And  there  is  and  can  be  no  higher  con- 
ception of  rightness  in  all  personal  relations  of  men  than 
is  given  in  this  Christian  idea  of  righteousness  as  the  ful- 
filling the  ideal  law  of  love,  or  having  in  daily  life  the 
Spirit  of  Christ.  Thus  the  idea  of  righteousness,  instead 
of  remaining,  as  in  our  moral  systems  it  too  often  does,  a 
cold,  impassive,  and  hard  requirement,  which  goes  against 
our  blood,  is  itself  warmed  up,  made  attractive,  and  filled 
with  a  spiritual  light ;  duty  itself  in  the  ethics  of  Chris- 
tianity becomes  free  and  hopeful  as  a  gracious  act. 

The  Christian  Ideal  as  absolute,  both  qualitatively  and 
quantitatively  —  in  spirit  and  in  conduct  —  as  holiness  and 
righteousness  —  is  the  Christian  law  of  conscience.     The 

1  W.  Robertson  Smith,  The  Prophets  of  Israel,  p.  72. 


126  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

moral  law  in  the  Christian  consciousness  is  the  authority 
of  the  Christian  ideal-good.  As  God  is  the  good,  realizing 
in  his  own  fulness  of  life  the  moral  good,  so  the  divine 
Jaw  is  the  will  in  which  God's  moral  being  finds  expression 
of  its  absolute  Avorth.  The  fullest  historic  expression  of 
His  good  will  is  the  life  of  Jesus  Christ.  Hence  the  Christ 
is  revelation  also  of  the  law  of  God.  He  manifests  the  law 
in  its  spiritual  perfection,  and  consequently  his  authority 
is  final  as  the  law  of  the  Spirit  in  the  Church  of  God. 

II.  The  Christian  Ideal  is  extensive  over  all  spheres  of 
activity.     It  is  an  ideal  coextensive  with  life. 

Man  exists  in  a  great  variety  and  complexity  of  rela- 
tions, some  of  them  changing,  some  of  them  constant :  the 
ideal  of  man  must  extend  to  all  these  relations,  and  touch 
even  the  temporary  and  most  transitory  conditions  and 
moods  of  his  existence.  If  the  moral  ideal,  which  we 
have  chosen,  fails  to  reach  any  of  the  actual  relations  of 
our  life,  if  it  has  to  be  stretched  beyond  its  natural  elas- 
ticity, or  pieced  out  from  other  sources,  in  order  that  it 
may  be  made  to  extend  over  some  new  relation  or  include 
special  circumstances  of  our  experience,  it  is  so  far  a 
defective  ideal,  and  can  no  longer  be  regarded  as  the 
absolute  human  ideal  of  good.  Coextension  with  hu- 
manity, and  the  whole  life  of  humanity,  is  a  necessary  con- 
dition of  the  true  ideal.  That  ideal  must  be  adequate, 
moreover,  to  the  full  possibility,  to  the  whole  possible 
development,  of  the  life  of  humanity.  The  human  ideal 
must  fit  life  naturally  and  by  virtue  of  its  own  elastic 
correspondence  to  it,  as  the  atmosphere  fits  the  earth,  sur- 
rounding every  least  blade  of  grass  as  well  as  enveloping 
the  Alps,  covering  all  plains,  and  resting  over  the  ocean's 
expanse.  To  discover  at  any  point  of  life  the  non-exten- 
sion of  our  ideal,  would  be  to  prove  the  ideal  deficient. 
But  to  find  our  ideal  expanding  over  life  in  any  larger 
development  of  it,  availing  for  every  new  and  intricate  social 
complication  of  it,  is  to  gain  fresh  evidence  of  its  divine- 
ness.  Real  life  has  the  right  to  challenge  the  ideal  of 
Christianity,  and  to  press  all  its  points  of  striving  and 
of  want  upon  it,  and  to  ask,  Does  the  ideal  of  the  Christ 
answer  these  ? 


CONTENTS    OF   THE   CHPwISTIAN   IDEAL  127 

This  adequacy  of  the  Christian  Ideal  to  life,  it  will 
remain  for  us  to  discover  and  to  test  in  its  particulars  in 
our  subsequent  discussion  of  practical  ethics.  At  this 
point  we  are  content  to  assert  its  extension  as  a  necessary 
deduction  from  its  absoluteness,  and  to  affirm  its  sufficiency 
for  life  as  a  probable  consequence  of  the  vital  fulness  and 
power  of  i",  which  have  already  been  observed  in  the  gen- 
eral description  of  its  contents. 

III.  The  Christian  Ideal  is  comprehensive  of  all  objects 
and  aims  that  are  good. 

Its  comprehensiveness  follows  from  its  extension,  yet  the 
one  quality  is  to  be  distinguished  from  the  other.  For  the 
true  ideal  is  not  only  extensive  over  every  sphere  of  life, 
but  it  will  comprehend  also  all  the  goods  of  being.  The 
one  absolute  good  must  include  all  particular  and  indi- 
vidual goods,  or  comprehend  in  its  unity  the  whole  king- 
dom of  human  worths. 

Each  sphere  of  being  or  kind  of  activity  has  its  own 
good  or  end.  There  is  a  good  of  the  senses,  a  good  of 
each  special  sense,  —  beauty  for  the  eye,  harmony  for  the 
ear,  pleasure  for  the  taste,  a  genial  glow  of  sensation  for 
the  comfort  of  the  body.  The  intellect  has  its  good,  cor- 
responding to  its  rational  nature ;  and  there  are  pleasures 
of  the  imagination  as  Avell  as  the  ''  splendid  treasures  of 
memory."  The  lieart  has  its  kingdom  of  satisfactions  ;  and 
the  spirit  of  man  seeks  the  beatitude,  for  which  it  was  made, 
in  the  vision  of  God.  The  true  human  ideal  in  its  coex- 
tension  with  life,  must  comprehend  these  separate  goods, 
and  unite  in  its  supreme  conception  all  the  worths  of  life.^ 
In  this  organic  comprehension  of  the  ideal,  the  social  w^el- 

1  The  highest  good,  as  Schleiermacher  rightly  apprehended  it,  is  the  organic 
connection  of  all  goods,  consequently  of  the  whole  moral  being,  under  the  con- 
ception of  the  highest  good.  Rothe  says:  "  The  highest  moral  good  is  not  an 
individual  special  moral  good,  hut  that  moral  good  in  which  all  individual 
moral  goods  are  included,  consequently  the  organic,  united  totality  of  the 
same."  —  Theol.  Eth.  §  104,  2.  On  the  contrary,  Marheineke  maintains  that 
the  absolute  good  is  not  to  be  identified  with  the  idea  of  a  highest  good  to 
which  other  goods  as  lower  may  be  relative:  "  The  absolute  good  (Gute)  .  .  . 
is  the  only  real;  it  is  not  beside  or  for  other  goods  (Giiter),  as  the  last 
indeed,  and  as  the  highest,  but  it  is  the  good  (Gute)  itself,"  etc.  —  Theol. 
Moral,  ss.  137  ff.  But  this  is  an  abstraction  of  the  form  of  the  absolute  good 
from  its  contents.  The  particular  goods  of  being  are  the  contents  which  fill 
up  the  idea  of  the  good  as  absolute. 


128  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

fare,  together  with  individual  attainments  of  good,  is  to 
be  included.  All  natural  ends  of  being  are  to  find  scope  and 
to  be  harmonized  and  justified  in  it.  All  arts  may  con- 
tribute to  it.  The  supreme  good  can  exclude  only  that 
^vhich  is  destructive  of  life,  or  contradictor}^  of  being.  Its 
trueness  or  holiness  requires  it  to  be  exclusive  of  evil 
as  it  is  inclusive  of  all  good.  But  for  such  objects  of 
desire  or  endeavor  Avhich  are  not  in  themselves  contra- 
dictory of  the  ideal,  or  unholy,  an  adequate  human  ideal 
must  have  space  and  freedom. 

To  this  test  of  comprehensiveness  as  well  as  extension, 
the  Christian  Ideal  is  rightly  to  be  submitted.  Any  ideals 
which  may  be  proposed  are  to  be  searched  and  verified  by 
these  tests  of  real  life :  Do  they  reach  along  all  lines  of 
activity,  and  comprise  all  goods  of  being?  Is  the  pattern 
shown  on  your  mount  of  vision  large  enough  and  rich 
enough  to  serve  as  an  ideal  for  the  people  in  the  complex 
relations  of  society  ?  Let  the  least  child,  or  the  humblest 
man,  or  the  loftiest  and  most  aspiring  spirit  feel  an  im- 
pulse, or  be  capable  of  a  motion,  which  is  left  out  of  our 
ideal,  which  cannot  find  free  play  and  happy  adjustment 
within  its  lines  (so  far  as  that  is  not  an  unmoral  or  de- 
structive impulse),  and  by  that  failure  to  comprehend  it, 
the  ideal  itself  would  be  condemned,  the  pattern  be  proved 
untrue  to  life. 

The  comprehensiveness  of  the  Christian  Ideal,  together 
with  its  extension,  follows  directly  from  its  absoluteness ; 
yet  its  claim  to  these  supreme  qualities  is  to  be  verified  in 
its  continuous  applications  to  real  life.  The  conditions 
now  proposed  we  shall  keep  in  mind  throughout  our  dis- 
cussions of  practical  ethics.  Ideas  and  rules  of  conduct 
entertained  in  Christian  communities  are  to  be  searched 
under  these  test  questions. 

Other  ideals  or  conceptions  of  the  good  should  be  brought 
to  these  same  ethical  requirements ;  and  we  2)i'oceed  next 
to  inquire  how  far  some  of  the  chief  moral  ideals  which 
are  un-Christian  in  their  form,  or  anti-Christian  in  their 
spirit,  will  conduct  themselves  when  subjected  to  exam- 
ination under  these  tests  of  extension  and  comprehension. 


CONTENTS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  129 


III.     COMPARISON  OF   THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  WITH 
OTHER  IDEALS 

1.  The  ideals  which  may  be  derived  from  the  classic 
ethics,  when  compared  with  the  developed  Christian  Ideal, 
will  be  seen  to  lack  both  extension  and  comprehension. 
They  hold  in  general  ver}^  much  the  same  relation  to  Chris- 
tian ethics  that  the  religion  of  Israel  sustained  to  the  teach- 
ing of  Christ — a  preparatory,  educational  relation;  but 
even  in  the  best  products  of  the  classic  ethics  much  remains 
to  be  fulfilled.  Individual  utterances  of  the  great  ethical 
teachers  of  antiquity  may  be  found  which  rise  to  noble 
conceptions  of  the  ends  of  man's  life ;  and  sentiments 
worthy  of  the  saints  may  be  culled  from  the  writings  of 
the  Stoics.  Plato  dreams  of  divinest  things,  and  Aristotle 
sometimes  rises  above  his  level  of  commonplace  practical 
virtue,  and  speaks  for  a  moment  almost  like  a  moral  seer. 
A  sentence  like  this  in  the  Nicomachean  ethics  lifts  us,  at 
once,  out  of  the  mundane  morality  of  prudence  and  tem- 
perance into  a  higher  and  purer  atmosphere :  "  One  ought 
not,  according  to  the  ordinary  admonitions,  to  think  as  a 
man  because  one  is  a  man,  or  as  a  mortal  because  one  is 
mortal;  but  as  far  as  possible  one  should  make  himself 
immortal,  and  do  all  in  order  to  live  according  to  that 
which  is  most  excellent  in  him,  for  although  it  is  little  in 
quantity,  yet  in  power  and  worth  it  is  far  exalted  over  all 
things."  ^ 

We  may  admit  with  pleasure  and  contemplate  with  satis- 
faction the  skilful  portrayal  of  the  happier  features  of  the 
Roman  morals  which  Mr.  Lecky  has  drawn  from  many  fine 
passages  of  antiquity.^  But  Neander  reminds  us  of  "the 
shadowed  side  wliich  we  observe  generally  in  the  ancient 
ethics."  ^  Careful  historians  of  morals  will  not  fail  to  see 
the  sunny  side  of  the  classic  literature ;  yet  the  shadows 
and  the  chill  of  the  darker  side  are  known  to  all  thorough 
students  of  the  ethical  conceptions  of  the  ancient  world. 

1  Nic.  Ethics,  x.  7.  ^  /^/,<j^.  of  European  Morals,  vol.  i.  pp.  193  sq. 

3  Wissenschaftlichen  Abh.  s.  213. 


130  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

In  general  the  classic  ethics  does  not  escape  the  limita- 
tion of  a  particularistic  and  aristocratic  conception  of  the 
good,  and  its  possible  attainment  only  by  the  wise  or  the 
favored  few.  There  is  an  unconscious  doctrine  of  election 
pervading  the  Greek  ethics,  Avhich  divides  the  world  into 
Greeks  and  barbarians,  masters  and  slaves,  the  wise  and 
the  common  people.  And.  this  natural  doctrine  of  election 
in  the  Greek  philosophy  is  far  less  ethical  than  the  doc- 
trine of  election  which  was  proclaimed  in  the  prophetic 
literature  of  Israel ;  for  the  idea  of  the  divine  election  in 
the  religion  of  Israel  reached  at  least  towards  universalism, 
and  found  its  fulfilment  in  a  religion  for  humanity ;  —  it 
was  the  election  of  a  holy  people  for  the  service  of  God 
among  the  nations,  by  which  all  peoples  eventually  should 
be  blessed ;  —  but  the  aristocratic  doctrine  of  election  in 
the  Greek  ethics  never  overcame  its  particularism  and 
pride.  Zeno's  remarkable  prediction  of  the  one  state 
might  be  cited  as  worthy  to  be  placed  beside  Isaiah's 
prophecy  of  the  future  universal  dominion  of  the  chosen 
people  of  God :  "  All  men  shall  be  regarded  as  members  of 
one  people,  and  fellow-citizens;  there  shall  be  one  life,  and 
one  world,  as  one  flock  that  shall  be  led  by  one  common 
law."i  But  how  far  that  noble  Stoic  conception  of  the  one 
world  and  the  one  law  fell  short  of  the  Hebrew-Christian 
idea  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  may  be  learned  from  Plu- 
tarch's commentary  on  it :  ''  What  Zeno  only  saw  in  a 
dream,  that  has  Alexander  in  deed  accomplished."  ^  As 
Neander  has  observed,  Zeno  could  not  shoAV  how  a  thought 
such  as  he  had  uttered  could  be  wrought  out ;  and  the  com- 
munity which  he  would  bring  about,  would  prove  to  be  the 
dissolution,  not  the  fulfilment,  of  the  particular  orderings 
of  nature  and  the  proper  distinctions  between  men.  Hu- 
manity was  to  be  melted  together  in  one  mass,  not  devel- 
oped into  one  manifold  organism.  One  Rome  over  all  the 
world,  not  one  kingdom  of  the  Spirit  among  all  races  and 
tribes,  is  the  best  dream  of  antiquity.  When  brought  to 
the  test  of  universal  extension,  and  the  comprehension  of 

1  Plutarch,  de  fort.  Alex,  6.    See  Neander,  Wissenschaftlichen  Abh.  s.  152. 

2  Ibid.  s.  153. 


CONTENTS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  131 

all  national  elements  and  individualities,  the  classic  idea 
of  one  empire  is  found  wanting. 

We  may  recall  the  saying  of  Epictetus  that  one  should  not  regard  him- 
self "  as  a  citizen  of  Athens  or  Corinth,  but  of  the  world  "  {Diss.  i.  9.  1)  ; 
but  the  "citizen  of  the  world"  of  the  later  Stoicism  was  like  "the  man 
without  a  country." 

Greek  ethics  fails  also  to  recognize  the  full  scope  of  the 
life  of  humanity.  Plato  put  his  ideal  into  the  dream  of  a 
republic ;  and  the  sphere  for  the  exercise  of  virtue  and  the 
attainment  of  good  in  the  Aristotelian  ethics  is  still  the 
state.  He  knows  no  other  or  larger  opportunity  for  life 
than  that  furnished  in  his  conception  of  the  civic  body. 
Plato  indeed  brought  to  his  conception  of  the  ideal  republic 
some  transcendental  ideas  of  the  highest  good  which  exceed 
the  political  form  in  which  antiquity  could  conceive  of  its 
realization  ;  but  Aristotle's  ethics  are  thoroughly  political 
and  mundane.  The  kingdom  of  humanity  into  which  all 
the  nations  shall  bring  their  glory  and  honor,  is  an  inspired 
idea  beyond  the  habit  of  mind  of  the  great  masters  of 
political  ethics  in  antiquity. 

To  this  lack  of  extension  in  the  ideal,  in  consequence  of 
which  it  failed  to  compass  the  whole  range  of  human  life 
and  possibility,  may  be  traced  another  marked  deficiency 
of  the  Aristotelian  ethics,  —  its  want  of  aspiration.  The 
good  man  is  he  who  meets  wisely  the  existing  conditions 
of  life.  There  is  a  want  of  ideality  throughout  the  Nico- 
machean  ethics ;  there  is  little  that  is  aspirant  and  ideal- 
izino^  in  these  well-rounded  classical  lines,  nothino-  Gothic 
in  the  architecture  of  the  Greek  ethics.  It  is  mundane 
morality. 

The  one-sided  intellectualism  of  the  Platonic  ethics  was 
recognized  by  Aristotle;  yet  the  lack  in  motive-power  of 
the  Platonic  intellectualism  was  not  overcome  in  Aristotle's 
theory  of  the  virtues.  The  old  question  which  Aristotle 
raised  was  really  left  without  answer  even  by  the  most 
practical  moral  philosopher  of  the  Greeks :  "  We  say  it  is 
necessary  for  those  who  act  justly  themselves  to  become 
just ;  and  for  those  who  act  wisely  themselves  to  be  wise  ; 
for  if  they  do  just  and  wise  things,  already  are  they  just 


132  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

and  wise."  ^  How  to  pass  from  unjust  and  unwise  to  right 
doing  was  the  moi'al  problem  which  the  Greek  philosophy 
did  not  solve,  and  which  the  Christian  teaching  of  the 
new  birth  of  the  Spirit  only  is  sufficient  to  determine. 

Epictetus  discovered  this  weak  spot  in  the  moral  philosophy  of  his  age, 
and  exposed  it  with  unsparing  ridicule.  "  Surely,"  he  said,  "virtue  does 
not  consist  in  understanding  Chrysippus  ;  if  it  does,  then  improvemeiit  is 
confessedly  nothing  else  tlian  understanding  a  good  deal  of  Chrysippus ' ' 
{Diss,  i,  4.  2).  Epictetus  found  a  method  of  virtue  in  the  Stoic  law  of 
nature  enforced  by  religious  emotion:  he  would  say,  "Are  not  we  rela- 
tions of  God?"  (Diss.  i.  9.  3):  "We  are  God's  athletes."  (See  Dr. 
Hatch's  rendering,  Hibhert  Lectures.,  1888,  p.  155.) 

From  the  want  of  extension  in  the  classic  ideal  there 
follows  also  its  failure  to  comprehend  several  spheres  of 
life  and  kinds  of  virtue  in  its  conception  of  the  ethical 
ends  of  being ;  such  as  freedom  for  every  individual,  indus- 
trial independence,  the  brotherhood  of  men,  and  the  per- 
fect fruits  of  charity.  The  lofty  and  pure  height  of  virtue 
which  can  be  reached  only  by  the  arduous  path  of  self- 
denying  love  la}^  beyond  the  horizon  of  its  vision.  Liber- 
ality indeed  was  a  much  lauded  virtue  among  the  ancients  ; 
but  the  liberality  which  Aristotle  praises  does  not  approach 
the  love  which  reigns  from  the  cross.  A  recent  writer 
has  noted  the  contrast  between  Aristotle's  magnanimous 
man  and  the  virtuous  man  of  that  Christian  instructor, 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  who  was  not  unfamiliar  with  the 
best  wisdom  of  the  Greek  philosophy .^  The  general  limi- 
tations which  we  have  been  observing  in  the  Grecian  ideal 
of  the  good  man  appear  Avith  concrete  distinctness  when 
we  bring  the  ideal  magnanimous  man  of  the  Nicomachean 
ethics  not  merely  into  comparison  with  the  compendium 
of  honorable  conduct  which  one  of  the  early  church  fathers 
had  learned  in  the  school  of  Christianity,^  but  immediately 
before  the  character  which  irradiates  the  gospel  of  the  Son 
of  man. 

Dr.  Hatch  justly  recognizes  the  "moral  reformation  within  the  philo- 
sophical sphere  of  the  later  Stoicism,"  and  also  the  expansion  of  moral 

1  Nic.  Ethics,  lib.  2,  cap.  4.  See  Neander,  opus  cit.,  for  a  thorough  discussion 
of  this  point. 

2  Luthardt,  Gpsch.  der  Ch.  FAh.  vol.  i,  s.  137. 

3  Clement,  Pxd.  iii. ;  cf.  Nic.  Ethics,  iv.  3. 


CONTENTS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL.  133 

motive  from  its  profound  religious  conception  {opus  cit.  pp.  142  sq.).  Still 
even  this  reformatory  movement  of  the  later  Greek  ethics,  which  cul- 
minated in  the  writings  of  Epictetus,  fell  short  of  the  Christian  idea  of 
life,  and  could  not  by  its  own  momentum  escape  the  limitations  of  the 
whole  classic  conception  of  man.  Compare  Christ's  saying  that  "the 
Son  of  man  came  eating  and  drinking"  (Matt.  xi.  19),  with  the  descrip- 
tion which  Epictetus  gives  of  the  messenger  of  God  :  "  Take  notice  of  me 
that  I  am  without  a  country,  without  a  house,  without  an  estate,  without 
a  servant ;  I  lie  on  the  ground,  having  no  wife,  no  children,  no  coat,  but 
only  earth  and  heaven,  and  one  sorry  cloke  "  {Diss.  iii.  22.  5). 

The  want  of  extension  of  the  classic  ideal  on  the  relig- 
ious side,  and  its  consequent  failure  to  comprehend  the 
spheres  of  good  which  are  opened  to  the  spiritual  pursuit 
of  man's  highest  aims,  may  be  chargeable  not  so  much  to 
the  moral  as  to  the  religious  immaturity  of  the  Grecian 
world.  Yet  the  medigeval  endeavor  to  superinduce  the 
religious  ideal  upon  the  Aristotelian  ethics  discloses  not 
only  the. clumsiness  of  the  schoolmen,  but  still  more  the 
lack  of  breadth  in  the  original  classic  ideal  itself.  Its  ethi- 
cal basis  is  not  broad  enough  for  the  subsequent  religious 
superstructure.  A  moral  ideal  which  was  not  coextensive 
with  the  whole  spiritual  nature  of  man  was  taken  by  the 
schoolmen  from  the  Aristotelian  ethics,  and  then  the  so- 
called  religious  virtues  were  more  or  less  cumbrously  and 
precariously  built  upon  it.  Supernaturalism  in  morals  was 
added  to  the  classic  naturalism  as  a  divine  appendix  to 
ethics.  But  Christianity  cannot  consent  to  be  regarded  as 
an  appendix  to  nature,  nor  is  divine  grace  an  afterthought 
of  the  Creator.  In  the  mediaeval  endeavor  to  make  the 
Aristotelian  ethics  answer  for  the  Catholic  virtues,  a  false 
separation  was  introduced  in  ethics  between  moral  works 
and  works  of  supererogation.  The  so-called  evangelical 
counsels,  or  gracious  admonitions  to  more  than  is  com- 
manded, were  added  as  a  superlative  morality  to  Avhich  the 
common  people  are  not  called  or  chosen.^  But  our  ethical 
ideal,  as  we  have  already  urged,  must  be  coextensive  with 
all  human  activities  and  inclusive  of  all  duties,  or  it  must 
give  place  to  another.  If  it  be  conditioned  by  some  vir- 
tue which  is  higher  and  independent  of  it,  it  ceases  to  be 

iThe  relative  truth  in  the  "  evangelical  counsels  "  is  defined  later,  p.  313. 


134  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

an  absolute  ideal.  The  Christian  Ideal  affirms  its  own 
absoluteness  in  the  simple  command,  Be  perfect :  in  all 
relations,  under  all  conditions,  and  for  all  ends,  or  con- 
ceivable goods  of  existence,  Be  perfect.  To  be  perfect  is 
to  live  in  right  relations  always  and  universally.  Hence 
there  cannot  be  a  superior  and  exclusive  kind  of  perfection 
possible  only  to  the  few.  The  Sabbath  was  made  for  man  ; 
that  which  is  sacred  is  for  all  men,  their  common  obliga- 
tion ;  the  Christian  absolute  is  a  universal  virtue. 

2.  Comparative  ethics  would  require  a  careful  inquiry 
concerning  the  resemblances  and  the  contrasts  to  be  ob- 
served between  the  Christian  Ideal  and  the  conceptions  of 
the  highest  good  which  have  obtained  in  the  religions  of 
the  East.  The  full  treatment  of  this  subject  belongs  in 
this  series  of  text-books  to  the  department  of  comparative 
religion ;  the  limits  of  our  space  permit  us  to  note  simply 
the  following  points  of  ethical  comparison  between  the 
Buddhistic  and  the  Christian  conception  of  the  chief  end 
of  human  life  :  — 

(1)  The  supreme  ethical  word  of  Buddhism  is  renun- 
ciation ;  the  supreme  word  of  Christianity  is  consecration. 
"  Having  abandoned  these  things,  without  adopting  others, 
let  man,  calm  and  independent,  not  desire  existence:"  — 
such  is  the  counsel  of  Buddhism.^  "  Consecrate  them  in 
the  truth:  thy  word  is  truth :"  ^  —  this  is  the  jDrayer  of 
the  Master  for  his  disciples.  Not  merely  renunciation  of 
life,  but  rather  the  consecration  of  it,  is  the  rich  Christian 
word. 

(2)  In  this  fundamental  contrast  there  is  involved  also 
the  difference  between  a  comparatively  negative  and  a 
positive  relation  of  the  mind  to  truth.  Christianity  is  a 
supernal  faith  in  truth :  "  To  this  end  have  I  been  born, 
and  to  this  end  am  I  come  into  the  world,  that  I  should 
bear  witness  unto  the  truth.  Every  one  that  is  of  the  truth 
heareth  my  voice  :  "  ^  —  such  is  the  divine  Master's  loyalty 
to  truth  in  the  hour  of  his  self-sacrifice.  "  The  Brahmawa 
for  whom  '  equal '  and  '  unequal '  do  not  exist,  would  he 

1  StUta-nipdta,  v.  839.    See  Kueiieu,  National  Religions,  p.  300. 

2  John  xvii.  17.  ^  Joliu  xviii.  37. 


CONTENTS    OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    IDEAL  135 

say,  '  This  is  true  '  ?  Or  with  whom  should  he  dispute, 
saying,  '  This  is  false  '  ?  With  whom  should  he  enter  into 
dispute  ?  "  ^  —  such  is  the  philosophic  surrender  of  the 
truth  by  the  Buddha  on  the  way  to  Nirva?ia.  Christianity 
is  one  superlative  assertion  of  truth ;  "  Buddhism  raises  the 
rejection  of  every  affirmation  to  the  rank  of  a  principle."  ^ 
(3)  This  negative  rather  than  positive  relation  of  mind 
to  truth  shows  itself  in  a  further  ethical  contrast  in  the  con- 
ception of  salvation.  The  effort  of  Buddhism  is  justly  de- 
scribed as  an  effort  "  not  to  convert,  but  to  rescue."  Life  is 
to  be  saved  from  desire  and  delusion,  even  though  such  sal- 
vation ends  in  annihilation  of  the  will  to  live.  Christianity 
seeks  to  convert;  and  the  task  of  rescuing  from  evil  is 
only  a  part  —  the  first  and  loAver  part  —  of  its  work  of  con- 
version from  death  unto  life.  The  entire  positive  contents 
of  the  idea  of  salvation  which  we  have  found  in  Jesus'  words 
concerning  eternal  life,  are  wanting  in  the  Buddhistic  doc- 
trine of  Nirva>ia.^  The  contrast  is  profound  between  the 
Christian  idea  of  life  as  fulness  of  eternal  good,  and  the 
prevailing  thought  in  Buddhism  of  escape  from  suffering 
through  the  extinction,  at  least,  of  all  desire  of  life.  The 
determinative  idea  of  salvation  through  deprivation  natu- 
rally ended,  if  it  did  not  begin,  in  the  thought  of  the  high- 
est good  as  the  rest  of  an  eternal  death.  Christianity  in  its 
final  hope  proclaims  eternal  life ;  Buddhism  in  its  final 
hope  points  to  personal  extinction.* 

1  Sutta-nipdta,  v.  843. 

2  Ibid.  p.  302.  "  Naturally  this,  like  all  other  quietism,  has  its  limits  " :  as 
mere  scepticism  ultimately  must  affirm  its  principle  of  denial. 

3  Max  Miiller  thinks  that  in  the  conception  of  Nirva?ia,  although  not  gener- 
ally, the  earlier  teaching  of  Buddha  is  to  be  distinguished  from  the  later  philo- 
sophical dogma  of  annihilation.  —  ^'cze/ice  of  Eelif/ion,  pp.  138  sq.  Passages 
may  be  quoted  from  the  canonical  literature  of  Buddhism  to  show  that  the 
word  Nirva//a  sometimes  meant  extinction  of  all  desire,  or  absolute  peace, 
and  not  necessarily  annihilation  of  being ;  but  the  existence,  and  hence  the 
possibility  of  a  continued  existence  of  the  individual  soul,  was  not  one  of  the 
affirmations  of  Buddhism.  Perhaps  the  truth  concerning  the  different  con- 
ceptions, which  are  contained  in  the  word  Nirva??a,  is  hit  in  the  opinion  of 
Professor  De  La  Saussaye  {Science  of  Belif/ion,  p.  GOl),  that  official  Buddhism 
hesitated  to  choose  between  the  ideas  of  Nirvana  as  extinction  of  being  or 
cessation  of  suffering. 

4  For  example,  in  the  Buddhist  book  entitled  The  Foumlation  of  the  King- 
dom of  Rif/JitPOiij<nps}<,  we  read  :  "  Immovable  is  the  emancipation  of  my  heart. 
This  is  my  Jast  existence.  There  will  now  be  no  re-birth  for  me.  Thus  spake 
the  Blessed  One."  —  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  xi.  p.  153. 


136  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

This  difference  in  tlie  conception  of  the  supreme  good 
as  the  completion  or  extinction  of  life,  appears  also  in  the 
contrast  between  the  comfort  of  the  gospel  for  the  sorrow- 
ing, and  the  onl}^  solace  which  Buddhism  had  to  offer  to 
these  wdio  mourn.  In  the  legends  of  Buddha  he  seeks  to 
console  the  mother  who  had  lost  her  child  by  bidding  her 
go  to  all  other  homes,  and  learn  that  each  has  its  own 
sorrow,  and  that  there  are  many  more  dead  than  living. 
Jesus  comforted  the  sisters  at  Bethany  by  going  in  the 
power  of  the  living  God  to  the  tomb,  and  proclaiming  the 
resurrection  and  the  life. 

(4)  The  difference  between  the  quietism  of  Buddhism 
and  the  positivism  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  eternal  life 
determines  a  still  further  contrast  in  the  entire  conception 
of  morality.  The  wisdom  and  virtue  of  many  precepts  of 
the  Buddhistic  ethics,  the  beauty  of  many  sayings,  should 
not  be  overlooked;  but  in  the  midst  of  many  striking 
resemblances  the  contrast  also  appears  between  the  whole 
Buddhistic  and  Christian  conception  of  morality.  In  the 
former  the  moral  life  is  a  means  to  an  end  which  is  not 
ethically  conceived  as  ultimately  fulness  of  good,  but 
rather  metaphysically  determined  as  a  resolution  of  all 
desire  and  conscious  personality  into  Nirvana,  —  the  final 
lapse  of  life  beyond  rebirth  into  the  passionless  all  of  exist- 
ence ;  while  in  Christianity  the  moral  is  not  only  a  means 
towards  an  end,  but  virtue  itself  is  part  and  essence  of  the 
final  ideal  to  be  attained.  Morality,  in  the  Christian  con- 
ception, is  not  only  a  way  towards  the  goal  of  existence ; 
it  is  also  good  to  be  reached  in  the  goal  of  life.^ 

This  radical  difference  between  the  ethics  of  Buddhism 
and  of  Christianity  as  a  whole  appears  clearly  when  we 
compare  the  rise  and  place  of  monasticism  in  Christian 
history  with  the  asceticism  of  Buddhism.^      Monasticism 

1  De  La  Saussaye  hardly  expresses  this  radical  defect  in  the  whole  ethical 
conception  of  Buddhism  too  strongly,  when  he  remarks:  "As  Buddhism  al- 
most always  gives  prohibitions  and  not  commands,  morality  for  a  real  saint 
or  a  monk  is  purely  negative;  all  doing  is  a  bondage  from  which  he  is  free; 
the  more  he  resembles  a  dead  being,  the  higher  he  has  risen  "  (Science  of 
Jiclif/ion,  p.  (iOG). 

^  Kuenen  has  emphasized  this  difference  in  his  National  Religions,  pp.  304- 


CONTENTS    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  137 

existed  in  Buddhism  from  tlie  first,  and  was  constitutive 
of  it ;  in  Christianity  it  appeared  later  on,  and  as  one  ten- 
dency of  many  in  the  development  of  the  Church.  "  There 
could  be  no  Buddhism  without  'bhikshus' — there  is  a 
Christianity  without  monks."  ^  Buddhism  has  no  concep- 
tion of  the  kingdom  of  God  into  which  is  to  be  brought  all 
the  honor  and  the  glory  of  the  nations. 

3.  By  means  of  these  same  tests  of  extension  and 
comj^rehension  which  are  given  in  the  absoluteness  of 
the  Christian  Ideal,  we  may  judge  and  correct  modern 
ideals  which  have  grown  up  partly  under  the  influence 
of  Christian  ideas,  and  partly  without  the  pale  of  acknowl- 
edged Christianity. 

(1)  Among  these  modern  forms  vdiich  the  ideal  of  life 
has  assumed,  may  be  mentioned,  first,  the  sesthetic  ideal, 
as  it  took  shape  and  color  in  literature  in  the  writings  of 
Schiller,  or  as  it  has  appeared  (not  without  other  Hebrew 
elements)  in  the  revived  Hellenism  of  Matthew  Arnold. 

In  this  conception  beauty  and  goodness  ultimately  coin- 
cide. Good  morals  are  good  taste.  The  true  life  is  the 
beautiful  life,  and  conversely  a  beautiful  life  will  become 
a  true  life. 

The  truth  in  this  aesthetic  ideal  we  should  be  the  last 
to  question  in  the  interest  of  Christian  morality.  The 
life  of  the  Son  of  man  was  the  life  of  simple  naturalness 
and  of  perfect  spiritual  beauty.  The  Christ  did  not  fail 
to  notice  the  lilies  of  the  field,  the  birds  of  the  air,  and 
the  vine  by  the  door.  Nature  to  his  eye  was  one  sym- 
bolism of  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  Nor  does  the  Chris- 
tian beatitude  fail  to  include  the  idea  which  possessed 
Schiller  of  a  state  of  tcsthetic  perfection  beyond  the  pres- 
ent dynamic  moral  state,  as  he  regarded  it,  or  existing  con- 
dition of  inharmonious  conflict,  —  the  play,  greatly  to  be 
desired,  of  a  harmonious  and  beautiful  life  above  the  neces- 
sity of  moral  endeavor  and  strife.^    Neither  in  Christian  mor- 

311,  After  pointing  out  the  evident  resemblance,  he  says  that  "  it  is  at  this 
very  point  that  the  deeper,  nay,  the  fundamental,  difference  between  the  two 
religions  is  revealed."  i  Ihid.  p.  306. 

2  "Man  is  only  entirely  man  when  he  plays"  :  this  paradox  Pchiller  ex- 
plains at  length  in  his  Letters  on  Esthetic  Education  (No.  15).    In  the  closing 


138  CHUISTIAlSr   ETHICS 

als  should  the  intimate  and  natural  relationship  be  denied 
between  the  beautiful  and  the  good  ;  we  may  readily  grant 
the  assertion  that  the  step  from  the  testhetic  to  the  moral 
is  much  easier  than  the  step  from  the  physical  to  the  moral. 
We  feel  instinctively  that  one  ought  to  rise  naturally  and 
easily  from  a  life  in  love  with  beauty  to  a  life  at  one  with 
goodness.  We  feel  a  painful  contradiction  between  a  high 
sesthetic  development  and  a  life  of  moral  turpitude.  Art 
ought  to  be  sinless.  Nor  should  the  moral  geniality,  the 
happy  naturalness  and  freshness  of  feeling,  and  the  fine 
responsiveness  of  spirit  to  the  world  without,  which  be- 
long to  the  sesthetic  ideal  of  life,  be  lightly  valued.  A 
true  conception  of  life  must  reach  in  its  extension  to  the 
ideal  ends  of  grace  which  Schiller  sought  to  attain  ;  and  it 
should  include  in  its  summation  of  the  good  those  ele- 
ments of  beauty  and  of  joy  which  light  up  the  morals 
of  sestheticism,  —  the  laughter  and  the  song  of  the  sunny 
life  of  that  ancient  world  which  has  passed  away. 

But  the  aesthetic  ideal  is  inadequate  to  life  when  taken 
by  itself,  and  without  further  extension  and  profounder 
comprehension  of  the  problem  of  good  and  evil  than 
Schiller  gave  to  it  in  his  letters  on  sesthetic  education,  or 
than  Matthew  Arnold  has  reached  even  in  his  revived 
Hellenism,  with  its  infusion  of  Hebrew  righteousness. 
For  the  moral  equation  is  not  exhausted  in  terms  of  the 
beautiful.  The  good  equals  the  beautiful,  and  something 
more ;  the  moral  problem  is  not  solved  by  the  identifi- 
cation of  these  two  terms.  Our  moral  ideal  must  reach 
to  the  bottom  of  the  deadly  fact  of  moral  evil,  and  prove 
equal  to  the  historic  problem  of  suffering  and  sin.  A 
picture  of  an  angel,  however  radiantly  beautiful,  does 
not  present  a  working  model  for  a  being  who  is  under  the 
dominion  of  moral  evil.  His  ethical  conception  of  life 
must  reach  to  the  depths  of  his  actual  misery  as  well  as 
extend  to  the  skies.  His  idea  of  perfect  virtue,  and  the 
life  made  beautiful,  must  take  account  of  the  present  facts 

letter  he  distinguished  between  the  dynamical  state  of  rights,  the  ethical 
state  of  duties,  and  the  festlietic  state,  in  which  is  the  fiiliilment  of  good.  The 
idea  of  beauty  Schiller  exalts  as  au  idea  of  the  reason,  a  transcendental  idea. 


CONTENTS    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  139 

of  liis  moral  liumiliation,  and  comprehend  the  processes 
by  which  the  evil  may  be  cast  out  and  whatsoever  things 
are  lovely  be  restored.  The  true  human  ideal  is  the 
ideal  not  of  a  pure  angel,  but  of  a  sinner  made  angelic, 
of  a  broken  man  delivered  from  the  bondage  of  the  flesh, 
of  a  fallen  being  restored  and  exalted  to  the  security  of 
the  upright  and  harmonious  life. 

Owing  to  its  want  of  extension  towards  the  darker  side 
and  altogether  unsesthetic  aspect  of  human  existence,  the 
romantic  ideal,  and  to  some  extent  the  literary  ideals  of 
many  writers,  fail  to  do  justice  to  certain  necessary  forms 
of  human  virtue,  and  are  therefore  proved  defective  also  by 
our  second  test  of  comprehension  of  good.  Grant  that 
Puritanism  was  uneesthetic ;  that  Calvinism  has  been  a 
stern  teacher  of  duty ;  that  Oliver  Cromwell  did  not  hew 
to  a  line  of  beauty ;  that  the  early  type  of  religious  faith 
in  New  England  lacked  color,  warmth,  and  grace.  Yet  an 
ideal  which  should  have  no  room  in  it  for  the  militant 
virtues,  and  which  should  lay  aside  the  strength  of  Puri- 
tanism, would  fail  of  historic  comprehension.  Calvinism 
has  much  to  answer  for  on  the  aesthetic  score  ;  Puritanism 
has  followed  the  arduous  path  of  duty  without  looking  to 
either  side,  and  noticing  how  fair  are  the  fields,  and  how 
full  of  color  and  song  the  nature  which  God  has  filled  to 
overflowing  with  the  joy  of  life.  Admit  that  Puritanism 
wore  needless  blinders, — it  went  straight  on  and  carried 
man's  burden ;  it  lifted  by  main  strength  the  whole  world 
to  a  higher  order,  and  opened  a  purer  and  grander  pros- 
pect for  humanity.  Grant  that  the  true  ideal  should 
include  the  sesthetic,  extend  to  the  least  flower,  and  own 
the  simplest  joy  of  nature  ;  it  should  not,  therefore,  exclude 
the  awe  of  the  Calvinistic  conception  of  the  divine  sov- 
ereignty, and  the  power  of  that  tremendous  sense  of  man's 
responsibility  which  Puritanism  succeeded  in  maintaining. 
The  iron  need  not  be  taken  from  the  blood,  nor  the  com- 
manding vision  of  righteousness  from  the  soul,  when  the 
touch  becomes  fine,  the  heart  tender,  and  the  eye  sunny,  in 
the  world  of  beauty,  light,  and  love. 

Schiller's   ideal  of  a  life   formed  under  the  influence  of 


140  CHKISTIAX  ETHICS 

the  beautiful  receives  something  of  this  needed  tonic  of 
righteousness,  it  is  true,  in  Matthew  Arnold's  Hebraized 
Hellenism ;  yet  his  idea  of  conduct  touched  by  a  sense 
of  some  power  not  ourselves,  which  makes  for  righteous- 
ness, and  pervaded  with  sweetness  and  light,  needs  itself 
to  strike  deeper  root  into  the  sources  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment righteousness;  it  should  draw  its  happy  reasonable- 
ness of  virtue  from  a  more  intimate  and  abiding  knowledge 
of  the  Father,  in  doing  whose  will  the  strong  Son  of  God 
found  his  life  filled  with  a  sweetness  and  light  such  as  has 
never  been  manifested  in  the  whole  kingdom  of  Hellenism, 
ancient  or  modern,  such  as  can  be  known  only  to  the  chil- 
dren of  heaven. 

(2)  The  Evolutionary  Ideal. 

Without  repeating  the  ethical  criticism  to  which  in 
other  relations  this  ideal  renders  itself  liable  (pp.  84  sq.),  we 
insist  at  this  point  that  it  should  be  subjected  rigorously  to 
those  moral  tests  to  which  we  shall  endeavor  to  bring  the 
Christian  Ideal  throughout  our  subsequent  discussions  of 
the  virtues,  duties,  and  motives  of  life ;  namely,  the  severe 
tests  of  moral  extension,  comprehension,  and  absoluteness. 

The  evolutionary  ethics  claims  to  cover  the  present  facts 
of  life,  both  individual  and  social ;  it  will  not  presume  to 
extend  into  the  unknown  regions  of  the  hereafter,  or  to 
determine  the  possibilities  of  the  spirit.  It  has  an  eye 
single  to  human  welfare  in  the  progressive  development 
of  the  human  good  on  this  earth.  It  builds  no  watch- 
tower  for  observations  in  moral  astronomy.  The  heavens 
must  remain  unknown.  But  whatever  may  be  our  knowl- 
edge or  our  ignorance  of  them,  nevertheless  the  heavens 
belong  to  the  environment  of  the  earth.  The  unknown 
power  to  which  Mr.  Spencer  reduces  the  ultimate  causa- 
tion of  phenomena,  is  the  formative  and  efficient  energy  of 
life  throughout  all  its  phenomena.  Known  or  unknown, 
it  is  power  to  be  reckoned  with  in  our  moral  dynamics. 
Even  though  this  ultimate  force  be  a  mystery,  it  is  the 
one  universal  power  with  which  Ave  have  to  do.  Some 
determination,  therefore,  of  our  relation  to  it,  and  some 
practical  reckoning  with  it  in  our  conduct,  must  belong  to 


CONTENTS    OF    THE    CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  141 

the  moral  history  and  the  moral  stability  of  this  life.  I 
am  utterly  ignorant  of  the  nature  of  gravitation  ;  but  to 
the  law  of  gravitation  I  must  conform  in  every  physical 
action.  I  may  know  nothing  of  the  "  divinity  that 
shapes  our  ends  "  ;  but  to  the  law  of  the  ultimate  Force, 
the  Unknown  Power,  the  God  over  all,  I  must  learn  in  all 
my  actions,  and  in  every  vital  breath,  to  conform,  if  I  am 
to  preserve  my  moral  equilibrium,  and  to  live  a  happy  life. 
So  that  the  whole  range  and  significance  of  those  ethical 
elements  Avhich  belong  to  man's  spiritual  nature  and  en- 
vironment cannot  be  ruled  out,  and  counted  as  though 
they  were  nothing,  by  the  mere  assertion  that  they  tran- 
scend moral  experience  and  belong  to  the  unrevealed  mys- 
tery of  life.  Known  or  unknown,  revealed  or  unrevealed, 
they  have  relations  to  conduct ;  these  powers  of  the  world 
to  come  touch  on  all  sides  our  moral  consciousness ;  they 
shape  our  thoughts  and  dreams  of  our  ideal  ends  of  being. 
Morals  must  at  the  very  least  be  left  open  towards  this 
higher  side  of  human  possibility,  and  a  science  which 
would  close  the  circle  without  inclusion  of  this  larger 
prospect  will  possess  but  a  limited  and  confined  sphere  of 
good. 

Positivism  has  indeed  sought  to  keep  the  circle  open  on  the  upper  cir- 
cumference of  human  nature,  and  to  commend  tliis  larger  good,  in  its 
religion  of  humanity.  How  far  positivism  has  succeeded  in  its  endeavor 
to  create  for  itself  a  religion,  after  having  devoured  all  religions  before  it 
(like  the  lean  kine  in  Pharaoh's  dream),  is  a  question  which  belongs  rather 
to  the  study  of  comparative  religion  than  to  a  treatise  on  ethics  ;  our 
present  contention  is  that  the  scientific  conception  of  the  good  cannot, 
without  limitation  and  want  of  moral  comprehension,  be  finished  and  closed 
up  in  terms  of  present  welfare,  as  writers  like  INIr.  Stephen  would  define 
it  exclusively  in  the  goods  of  present  life  ;  in  other  words,  to  be  exten- 
sively and  comprehensively  ethical,  and  with  an  absolute  righteousness, 
the  scientific  hiduction  of  virtue  must  be  left  wide  open  on  the  spiritual 
side,  and  its  insufficiency  be  confessed  to  include  in  itself  the  whole  ideal 
of  man's  being  and  destiny. 

The  scope  of  this  general  criticism  of  the  evolutionary  ideal,  pure  and 
simple,  unsupplemented  by  the  deductions  of  a  spiritual  psychology,  and 
not  expanded  in  the  light  of  the  life  of  the  Christ,  will  appear  further  on 
in  our  more  particular  consideration  of  the  relations  and  range  of  almost 
every  vutue  and  duty  of  life. 


142  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

(3)    Modern  Socialistic  Ideals. 

These  are  not  by  any  means  necessarily  unchristian; 
often  they  are  advanced  as  ideals  directly  in  the  line  of 
the  true  Christian  idea  of  society.  For  convenience,  and 
in  order  that  we  may  avoid  repetition,  we  reserve  discus- 
sion of  these  ideals  to  a  later  chapter ;  we  observe  in  pass- 
ing that  under  the  tests  which  we  are  applying  they  must 
be  judged  by  their  competency  or  their  failure  to  meet  the 
requirements  of  life  in  all  directions,  and  to  do  justice  to 
the  several  elements  which  are  to  be  ■  harmonized  in  the 
ultimate  good  of  human  life.^ 

In  this  chapter  we  have  considered  the  Christian  Ideal 
in  its  primary  historical  revelation,  and  have  determined 
its  general  characteristics  in  the  Christian  consciousness  of 
it;  we  have  also  briefly  compared  other  ideals  with  it,  and 
seen  at  a  glance  its  superior  comprehensiveness. 

The  contents  of  this  Christian  Ideal,  so  far  as  they  have 
been  realized  in  Christian  experience,  or  may  now  be 
apprehended  in  our  efforts  to  reach  after  "  better  things, 
and  the  things  that  accompany  salvation  "  ^  will  appear 
more  concretely,  as  we  shall  proceed  to  treat  in  detail  of 
the  Christian  virtues  and  duties.  In  accordance  with  these 
general  characteristics  of  the  true  ideal  —  its  moral  abso- 
luteness, or  holiness ;  its  extension,  or  adequacy  to  life ;  and 
its  comprehension,  or  inclusion  of  all  goods  —  our  Chris- 
tian determinations  of  character  and  standards  of  conduct 
are  to  be  formed  and  judged. 

1  Mr.  Mackenzie  discriminates  tliree  elements  which  should  he  recognized 
and  harmonized  in  the  social  ideal :  "  (1)  individual  culture,  (2)  the  conquest 
of  nature,  and  (3)  right  social  relations"  {Introduction  to  Social  Philosophy, 
p.  241).  The  organic  ideal  "  must  include  such  a  degree  of  freedom  as  is 
necessary  for  tlie  working  out  of  the  individual  life.  It  must  include  such  a 
degree  of  socialism  as  is  necessary  to  prevent  exploitation  and  a  brutalizing 
struggle  for  existence,  as  well  as  to  secure  to  each  individual  such  leisure  as 
is  required  for  the  development  of  the  liigher  life.  It  must  include  such  a 
degree  of  aristocratic  riile  as  is  necessary  for  the  advance  of  culture  and  for 
the  wise  conduct  of  social  affairs"  (p.  293).  To  these  elements  he  adds  a 
fourth,  "tlie  principle  which  is  necessary  to  com1)ine  them."  This  principle 
he  finds  in  "  the  recognition  of  vital  relationships,"  or,  "  Fraternity."  Chris- 
tian ethics  has  in  its  supreme  virtue  of  love  the  organizing  principle  of  the 
elements  of  the  social  ideal,  and  without  this  principle  the  new  social  order 
cannot  he  formed  out  of  the  social  orders  which  are  passing  away. 

a  Heh.  vi.  9. 


CONTENTS    OF   THE   CHKISTIAX   IDEAL  143 

Before  we  are  ready,  however,  to  proceed  farther  in  this 
direction,  we  must  study,  in  the  proj)er  historical  method 
of  Christian  ethics,  the  process  through  which  the  moral 
ideal  comes  to  realization  among  men ;  we  should  seek  to 
understand  the  successive  epochs  as  well  as  the  modes  and 
conditions  of  its  progress  in  the  world ;  in  short,  we  must 
consider  the  facts  and  laws  of  the  progressive  realization 
on  earth  of  the  kingdom  of  the  Christian  Ideal  —  the  king- 
dom of  heaven. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE   REALIZATION   OF   THE   MORAL    IDEAL 

The  Christian  Ideal,  which  was  revealed  in  Christ,  and 
which  is  taught  by  his  Spirit  among  men,  has  not  yet  been 
fully  realized  in  the  life  of  humanity,  nor  is  it  perfectly 
reflected  even  in  the  best  Christian  consciousness  of  any 
age.  The  Spirit  still  convinces  the  world  of  sin.  The 
kingdom  of  organized  love  has  been  begun  on  earth,  but 
it  is  far  from  completion.  The  Christian  Ideal  of  life  is  a 
reality  among  men,  but  not  a  finished  reality.  The  whole 
common  life  of  humanity  has  not  yet  become  the  com- 
munion of  the  Holy  Ghost. 

There  is  to  be  followed  in  history  a  moral  process  con- 
tinued in  moral  freedom,  through  which  the  good  finds 
progressive  fulfilment,  and  the  moral  ideal  comes  with  the 
increasing  purpose  of  the  ages  to  realization.  History  is 
no  accidental  congeries  of  events,  no  heap  of  circumstances 
raised  and  scattered  by  the  winds  ;  human  history  betrays 
the  signs  of  a  moral  order,  and  a  moral  progress.  History 
in  its  profoundest  significance  is  a  moral  and  spiritual 
movement  towards  the  ideal  or  the  highest  good.^ 

We  have  already  indicated  in  the  introduction  (p.  27  sq.) 
the  conditions,  or  postulates,  which  are  necessary  to  this 
process  of  life  towards  a  moral  end.  We  proceed  now  to 
trace  historically  the  successive  steps  of  this  moral  process 
through  which  the  ideal  draws  towards  its  realization  in 
the  history  of  mankind.  We  must  seek  to  discover  the 
principle  or  law  of  the  moral  life  which  corresponds  to 
each  of  these  main  epochs  of  moral  development.  We 
shall  need  to  inquire  also  into  the  moral  methods  by  means 

1  See  the  author's  Old  Faiths  in  New  Light,  ch.  ii. 
144 


EEALIZATIOX   OF   THE   MORAL    IDEAL  145 

of  which  the  moral  movement  of  history  has  been  carried 
forward;  and  then  we  shall  be  prepared  for  the  further 
inquiry  (which  should  be  considered  before  we  can  pass 
to  an  intelligent  discussion  of  Christian  virtues  and  duties), 
to  what  extent  in  existing  types  of  character  and  institu- 
tions of  society  the  Christian  Ideal  may  be  regarded  as 
having  already  been  brought  to  pass,  and  made  a  visible 
kingdom  of  good  on  earth ;  and  further  in  what  respects 
the  ideal  is  to  be  apprehended  by  us  as  a  book  of  unfulfilled 
Christian  prophecy. 

We  shall  accordingly  discuss,  first,  the  epochs  and  cor- 
responding principles  of  the  moral  process  in  history. 

Ethics  implies  relations ;  moral  law  is  law  for  a  being  in 
certain  relations.  Ethics  involves,  on  the  one  hand,  a  sen- 
tiency  of  a  peculiar  kind  (however  philosophers  may  define 
it),  which  we  discriminate  as  moral  feeling ;  and  on  the 
other  hand,  certain  acts  to  be  done,  truths  to  be  owned,  and 
good  to  be  desired,  which  impress  themselves  upon  our 
moral  sentiency,  and  which,  as  we  perceive  them,  assume 
an  authority  over  us  which  we  call  the  reign  of  conscience. 
Even  though  the  real  objectivity  of  such  ethical  worths 
should  be  denied,  still,  all  moralists  must  lend  to  them 
a  certain  mental  objectivity;  for  the  ethical  state  con- 
sists in  a  distinctive  quality  of  consciousness,  —  a  recogni- 
tion of  self  as  under  law,  a  consciousness  of  self  as  both 
free  and  at  the  same  time  under  authority.  An  infinite 
being  might  be  conceived  as  having  no  relation  except  to 
himself,  as  being  both  subject  and  object  to  himself,  and 
that  ethically  as  well  as  metaphysically.  So  God  may  be 
said  to  have  moral  life  in  himself.  But  a  finite  being  lives  in 
all  the  extent  and  range  of  his  existence  in  relation  to  some 
environment,  and  the  kind  of  life,  whether  physical  or  higher 
life,  is  determined  in  relation  to  the  nature  of  the  environ- 
ment to  which  the  life  responds,  in  which  one  has  his  be- 
ing. Our  natural  ethical  consciousness,  like  our  sense  of 
physical  existence,  is  a  responsiveness  of  our  being  —  a  re- 
sponsiveness of  which  our  being  is  made  capable  in  the 
higher  as  well  as  lower  directions,  —  to  our  human  en- 
vironment :    a  response  in  the  one  direction  to  the  pres- 


146  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

ence  of  outward  nature,  and  a  response  in  the  higher 
direction  to  the  moral  and  spiritual  order  in  which  we  also 
live  and  move  and  have  our  being.  Hence  the  moral 
sphere  and  its  law  wears  always  an  aspect  of  objectivity 
to  the  thoughts  of  man's  heart;  and,  despite  all  the 
philosophers,  continues  thus  to  be  objective  to  the  common 
moral  sense  of  mankind.  We  grow  to  consciousness  of 
ourselves  as  under  law,  not  as  law  to  ourselves. 

But  this  is  the  moral  consciousness  in  its  objectivity  as 
we  now  realize  it;  what  was  it  in  its  primitive  state,  in 
the  early  awakening  of  it  in  some  prehistoric  man  ?  Look- 
ing back  over  the  moral  process  (so  far  as  it  is  historic) 
we  observe  that  the  development  has  advanced  on  two  re- 
lated lines;  the  evolution  of  morals  has  not  been  simple 
but  dual.  Both  the  moral  environment  has  been  advanced, 
and  the  moral  sentiency  has  been  intensified.  There  may 
be  an  increase  of  the  moral  materials  for  life,  and  an  en- 
hancement, also,  of  the  human  power  to  appropriate  those 
materials.  To  each  stage  in  the  development  of  the  moral 
environment  there  corresponds  an  adaptation  or  advance- 
ment of  the  living  principle  of  moral  appropriation  in  the 
subject.  So  that  the  successive  stages  of  moral  growth, 
the  great  epochs  of  human  progress  in  ethical  life,  are  to 
be  studied  in  this  double  aspect  of  them,  —  first,  we  are  to 
survey  the  moral  environment,  to  take  into  account  the 
outward  conditions,  the  degree  of  light  or  moral  revela- 
tion, the  materials  of  moral  judgment  and  motive,  which 
are  objectively  given  in  an  age ;  and  secondly,  the  appro- 
priating principle,  or  the  special  moral  adaptation  of  the 
subject  to  the  ethical  conditions  of  his  time. 

I.   THE  PREHISTORIC  STAGE  OF  MORAL  DEVELOPMENT 

The  beginnings  of  life,  as  well  as  the  ends  of  being,  are 
beyond  knowledge.  There  can  be  no  positive  science  of 
prehistoric  man.  There  is  frequent  need  of  reminding 
scientific  as  well  as  theological  speculators  of  Aristotle's 
observation  that  we  know  only  the  middle,  not  the  begin- 
nings or  the  ends  of  things.     We  may  easily  fall  prey  to  a 


REALIZATION   OF   THE   MOEAL    IDEAL  147 

scientific  or  a  theological  dogmatism  concerning  the  pre- 
historic conditions  of  things  human;  Darwinism  no  less 
than  Calvinism  may  be  tempted  by  a  theory  of  man's  first 
estate.  The  fabled  first  man  may  have  been  more  or  less 
richly  endowed  with  intellect  and  moral  sense  ;  he  may 
have  been  more  like  the  beasts  that  perish,  or  more  like 
an  angel  of  God,  than  our  science  or  our  theology  has 
conjectured;  what  we  know  with  positiveness  is  the  fact 
that  man,  so  early  as  we  can  follow  his  track  on  the 
earth,  was  a  moral  agent ;  and  so  soon  as  man  was  able 
to  make  for  himself  a  history  he  began  to  make  for  him- 
self a  moral  record.  What  we  know  of  the  historic  ethi- 
cal consciousness  compels  us  to  assume  that  there  must 
have  been  from  the  beginning  of  man's  life  on  earth  an 
ethical  potency  and  promise  for  such  moral  life  as  we  find 
to  have  been  actually  achieved  in  his  history.  We  must 
assume  in  the  earliest  and  most  nebulous  beginnings  of 
human  life  a  minimum  of  moral  capacity,  which  was  large 
enough,  and  distinctively  moral  enough,  to  afford  a  suffi- 
cient start  and  momentum  for  the  subsequent  evolution 
of  which  we  have  knowledge  in  history.  Anything  less 
than  this  w^ould  leave  the  moral  history  of  the  world 
without  rational  beginning  or  intelligent  explanation. 
The  first  moral  root  in  the  soil  of  nature  must  have  been 
quickened  with  the  same  kind  of  life  that  has  grown  out 
of  nature  into  the  fruitfulness  of  the  Avorld's  ethics.  There 
must  be  morality  enough  grounded  and  rooted  in  nature 
for  the  moral  consciousness  w^hich  has  risen  above  nature. 
There  must  have  been  from  the  beginning  enough  ethical 
and  spiritual  supernaturalness  involved  in  nature  to  ren- 
der intelligible  to  us  the  moral  and  religious  supernatural- 
ism  which  in  the  course  of  nature  has  brought  forth  the 
fruits  of  the  spirit. 

1.  We  assume,  therefore,  the  existence,  in  the  dim 
beginnings,  of  some  manlike  being  who  had  been  born 
into  moral  capacity  for  life.  At  some  point  evolution  had 
received,  when  all  things  were  ready,  the  fire  of  the  spirit, 
and  moral  life  flamed  into  self-consciousness.  How  such 
a  being,  capable  of  beginning  a  moral  history,  was  fash- 


148  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

ioned,  or  when,  may  be  a  question  of  scientific  imagination 
or  of  theological  concern ;  but  it  is  immaterial  from  the 
ethical  point  of  view.  The  fact  of  a  real  moral  start,  in  a 
being  capable  of  moral  life  and  growth,  is  for  ethics  the 
-material  fact.  Adam  may  remain  for  us  a  general  type  of 
man  in  the  beginning  of  his  moral  existence.  According 
to  Genesis  that  earliest  moral  stage,  that  first  chapter  in 
man's  moral  history,  is  to  be  conceived  of  as  a  state  alike 
of  moral  innocence,  immaturity,  and  instability.  The 
capacity  for  moral  life  had  been  reached,  but  a  real  right- 
eousness (as  Augustine  would  say)  remained  to  be  realized 
in  the  drama  of  man's  temptation,  fall,  and  recovery 
from  sin. 

It  should  not  be  forgotten,  however,  how  little  is  made  of  Adam  in 
the  rest  of  the  Bible ;  only  a  very  few  allusions  to  Adam's  fall  occur  in 
all  the  succeeding  books  of  the  Bible.  Jesus  never  seems  to  have  men- 
tioned him  in  his  teaching.  Paul  draws  a  contrast  between  the  old  and 
the  new  man,  the  earthly  and  the  spiritual,  by  a  reference  to  the  first 
chapters  of  Genesis.  The  prehistoric  moral  man  possesses  little  ethical 
interest  except  as  a  postulate  or  necessary  beginning  for  moral  history. 

This  stage  of  moral  beginnings  we  must  conceive  of  as 
a  condition  in  which  the  possibility  of  evil  is  left  open. 
Moral  capacity,  together  with  moral  immaturity,  is  all  that 
we  need  postulate  in  order  to  render  the  entrance  of  law 
and  the  beginning  of  sin  conceivable. 

The  possibility  of  evil  lies  open  in  any  moral  beginning 
which  we  can  conceive.  For  a  moral  beginning  is  a  tran- 
scendence of  the  necessity  of  natural  order.  Moral  freedom 
is  within  finite  limits  a  delegation  to  created  being  of  some- 
thing of  God's  power  to  have  life  in  Himself.  A  life  which 
is  thus  divine  in  its  essence,  although  finite  in  its  range, 
may  be  a  gift  of  the  Creator  beyond  recall.  Moral  creation 
is  in  a  sense  a  self-limitation  of  the  Creator.  Once  having 
trusted  nature  with  this  divine  gift  of  self-conscious  will, 
the  faithful  Creator  will  keep  his  trust.  Moral  jDcrsonality 
may  fall  from  its  idea,  may  alienate  itself  from  its  source, 
may  possibly  sink  even  in  self-degradation  beneath  the 
level  of  conscious  intelligence,  becoming  dead  in  sin ;  but 
it  is  not  a  gift  of  life  to  be  annihilated  by  a  fiat  of  omnipo- 
tence, or  to  be  put  back  at  God's  will  into  its  unmoral  pre- 


REALIZATION   OF   THE   MORAL    IDEAL  149 

existence.  And  if  this  gift  of  eternal  life  in  a  moral 
creation  be  worth  the  giving ;  if  it  must  be  given  in  order 
that  creative  love  may  impart  itself  to  the  utmost,  then 
the  risk  of  its  loss,  the  possibility  of  a  perversion  of  it  for 
a  Avhole  world-age,  and  the  cost  of  its  future  redemption, 
are  not  to  be  counted  in  the  balance.  Love  can  risk  much 
in  giving  all,  and  in  its  consciousness  of  power  to  redeem 
the  lost  by  still  loving  it.  Divine  love  quickens  nature 
with  Spirit,  and  in  the  living  soul  gives  of  itself  to  the 
utmost  because  it  is  love,  and  love  to  be  love  must  give 
all;  evil,  therefore,  with  its  possibilities  of  woes,  cannot 
prevent  love's  supreme  gift  to  another  of  moral  being  like 
itself,  although  evil  may  require  the  cost  of  the  divinest 
sacrificial  sorrow  of  the  same  love  for  the  recovery  of  its 
best  gift  to  nature. 

The  highest  good  of  a  moral  creation  cannot,  as  is 
obvious  from  its  nature,  be  gained  through  an  act  of  the 
divine  power;  it  must  be  won,  if  at  all,  as  the  result  of  a 
moral  history  and  on  the  plain  of  freedom.  To  create  at 
once,  as  it  were  off-hand,  a  realized  moral  good,  does  not 
lie  within  the  compass  of  power.  Hence  the  possibility  of 
evil  must  be  admitted  as  inherent  in  the  nature  of  the 
moral  gift,  and  the  liability  to  sin  is  involved  in  the 
capacity  for  virtue.^ 

Evil,  the  possibility  of  which  must  be  thus  admitted  as 
belonging  to  the  prehistoric  stage  of  human  life,  may  be 
more  than  a  necessary  incident  to  man's  moral  history.  It 
may  become  indirectly,  yet  none  the  less  truly,  a  possibility 

1  So  true  is  this  that  Mr.  Stephen,  writing  a  natural  history  of  ethics,  goes 
so  far  as  to  suggest  that  pain  may  always  be  necessary  as  a  condition  of 
progress:  "  I  can  at  least  see  no  reason  for  supposing  that  it  (progress)  implies 
the  extirpation  of  evil  in  general,  or  the  definitive  substitution  of  harmony  for 
discord." — Science  of  Ethics,  p.  445.  But  he  overlooks  the  fact  that  a  pos- 
sibility of  evil  which  at  first  may  lie  open  in  the  nature  of  moral  freedom 
may  in  time  be  closed  by  the  development  of  that  freedom  ;  that  the  finite 
will,  choosing  the  good,  may  eventually  itself  shut  the  door  to  evil  which 
creative  power  left  open  for  freedom  ;  that  while  a  certain  metaphysical  pos- 
sibility of  evil  may  always  be  supposed  to  lie  inherent  in  the  nature  of  virtue, 
and  to  belong  to  the  moral  perfection  of  Deity,  nevertheless,  that  possibility 
of  sin  may  become  morally  excluded,  practically,  effectually  closed,  in  the 
course  of  the  moral  life  of  a  finite  being.  Thus  in  the  Deity  itself  what  may 
be  conceived  to  be  a  metaphysical  possibility  of  evil  may  at  the  same  time  be 
eternally  a  moral  impossibility  of  evil. 


150  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

of  a  larger  realization  of  good,  a  way  towards  the  highest 
conceivable  consummation  of  good  in  a  moral  creation. 
The  ideal  of  perfect  being  in  a  perfect  life  may  be  attained 
either  directly  through  a  freedom  manifesting  itself  in 
obedience,  and  confirming  itself  in  righteousness;  or 
indirectly,  and  on  a  longer,  harder,  yet  no  less  sure  way 
towards  the  goal,  by  a  fall,  through  the  conflict  of  ages, 
and  in  the  final  exclusion  of  evil  by  means  of  suffering 
under  the  law  of  the  cross. 

Evil  may  be  tlie  longer  way  to  the  creature's  good  —  a 
way  of  suffering  and  through  death ;  yet  it  may  prove  only 
another  way  towards  the  same  divine  goal  of  the  creation, 
and  a  way  moreover  through  sacrificial  ages  to  richer  real- 
ization of  good  for  the  universe  as  a  whole. 

If  we  take  the  biblical  account  of  Adam  as  an  ethically 
natural  account  of  the  moral  beginnings  of  life,  the  fall 
of  man  may  be  regarded  as  both  a  loss  and  a  gain.  It  was 
a  fall  from  innocence  into  sin,  and  as  such  it  was  loss  and 
subjection  to  the  pain  of  death.  But  it  was  also  the 
beginning  of  a  moral  conflict  whose  end  in  the  love  of 
God  is  victor}^  The  descent  into  the  power  of  evil  and 
the  shadow  of  death  also  becomes,  according  to  God's 
promise,  an  advance  towards  the  righteousness  which  shall 
be  revealed  in  the  light  of  redemption.  The  step  down  is 
a  step  on  a  way  which  runs  forward,  although  through 
darkness  and  death.  The  earthly  paradise  is  lost,  but  the 
heavenly  may  be  gained.  Thus  from  the  moral  begin- 
nings of  creation  the  possibility  of  evil,  which  is  inherent 
in  man's  freedom,  is  taken  up  into  the  possibility  of  good, 
which  is  eternal  in  the  divine  love. 


The  further  development  of  this  thought  belongs  to  theodicy.  The 
moral  justification  of  a  creation  with  the  possibility  of  evil  can  be  con- 
ceived by  us  in  the  further  possibility  of  the  overcoming  of  its  evil  by  the 
good  v^^hich  is  given  in  the  same  creative  idea  and  purpose.  Only  when 
redemption  is  thus  regarded  as  itself  an  element  in  the  divine  idea  of 
creation,  when  creation  and  redemption  are  regarded  as  coexisting,  coeter- 
nal,  as  one  thought  in  the  mind  of  God,  can  we  seem  to  gain  a  theodicy 
which  shall  comprehend  the  fall  and  the  ages  of  death.  Atonement  in 
the  divine  idea  is  as  eternal  as  creation:  "The  Lamb  that  hath  been 
slain  from  the  foundation  of  the  world"  (Rev.  xiii.  8). 


REALIZATION    OF   THE   MORAL   IDEAL  151 

Following  the  biblical  account,  we  may  form  some  rational 
conjecture  concerning  the  moral  environment,  as  we  have 
called  it,  of  the  primitive  man.  We  may  conceive  with 
some  probability  what  the  moral  conditions,  or  materials  for 
moral  life,  may  have  been  in  its  earliest  distinct  beginnings. 

At  this  epoch  man  has  emerged  from  animalism.  Adam 
gives  names  to  all  creatures  brought  to  him.^  The  primi- 
tive man  shows  his  divine  call  to  master  the  universe  by 
giving  names  to  all  cattle,  and  to  the  fowl  of  the  air,  and 
to  every  beast  of  the  field.  Language  is  man's  mastery  of 
things.  In  this  free  intelligence  over  all  things,  the  process 
of  creative  evolution  has  gained  the  point  where  some  sense 
also  of  moral  relations  can  be  attained.  We  may  suppose 
the  moral  environment,  at  this  primitive  stage  of  the  pro- 
cess, to  have  been  at  its  simplest,  and  in  its  most  general 
form.  Something  begins  to  impress  itself  upon  the  awaken- 
ing consciousness  as  the  right  kind  of  life.  There  is  a 
presence  and  pressure  of  something  independent  of  the 
will,  existing  above  the  will,  and  for  it,  which  begins  to 
make  itself  felt  in  the  primitive  human  consciousness.^ 

2.  What,  then,  is  the  principle  of  appropriation,  corre- 
sponding to  this  primitive  moral  environment  ? 

We  may  seek  for  this  earliest  principle  of  moral  appro- 
priation, or  first  power  of  moral  receptivity,  in  two  ways, 
along  two  lines  of  investigation :  historically  in  the  traces 
and  signs  of  it  to  be  found  in  the  consciousness  of  primi- 
tive peoples  ;  or  embryologicall}^,  so  far  as  we  can  trace 
back  through  its  development  to  its  simplest  beginnings, 
the  mature  moral  consciousness  of  men. 

(1)  On  the  first  line  of  investigation  we  reach,  as  the 
elementary  principle  of  moral  consciousness,  some  simple 
moral  feeling, — a  mere  moral  sensation  we  might  call 
it,  —  which  implies,  however,  some  rudimentary  moral 
perception.  It  contains  a  primitive  moral  perception. 
This  may  be  vague,  indeterminate,  fluctuating.  But  it  is 
real.     Some  feeling  of  right,  involving  more  or  less .  defi- 

1  Gen.  ii.  19-20. 

2  Gen.  ii.  16:  "  And  the  Lord  God  commanded  the  man  "  ;  but  He  bi-ovf/ht 
the  animals  to  him_(v.  19).  Man  becomes  conscious  of  himself  as  under  a  com- 
manding authority. 


152  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

nite  or  crude  perceptions  of  what  is  right  or  wrong,  exists 
ill  savage  tribes,  and  may  be  traced  among  the  earliest 
records  of  the  primitive  ages.  There  was  a  primitive  and 
unformed  moral  feeling-perception  at  the  beginnings  of 
the  historic  evolution  of  human  consciousness.^ 

(2)  On  the  other  line  of  inquiry  we  reach  the  same 
result.  The  child's  consciousness  of  right  and  wrong,  as  we 
may  observe  the  earliest  motions  of  it,  is  an  unformed  moral 
feeling  which  gradually  resolves  itself  into  distinct  moral 
perceptions.  And  these  first  moral  perceptions  in  the  life 
of  the  child  are  given  in  its  recognition  of  the  vital  rela- 
tionships into  which  it  has  been  born :  slowly  the  child's 
consciousness  of  these  personal  relations  develops  into 
ideas  of  what  is  due  each,  and  of  the  right  adjustment  of 
its  actions  to  these  personal  relations.  Morals,  for  the 
child,  begin  in  its  learning  to  move  in  happy  harmony 
with  its  personal  surroundings,  very  much  as  learning  to 
walk  physically  consists  in  the  sense  and  mastery  of  the 
outward  relations  of  the  feet  and  the  floor.  In  such 
acquisition  of  knowledge  of  the  right  relations  of  life  — 
in  what  might  be  called  the  sense  of  happy  human  equi- 
librium —  we  come  to  our  moral  consciousness  of  life. 
Hence  we  can  understand  the  fact,  which  is  emphasized 
by  the  natural  historians  of  the  rise  of  conscience  in  man, 
that  the  beginnings  of  morality  to  be  observed  among 
primitive  tribes,  are  social  beginnings  ;  ^  the  emergence  of 
the  moral  sense  is  coincident  with  the  appearance  of  the 
tribal  sense,  and  is  involved  in  a  perception  of  what  is 
necessary  to  some  social  order.  The  moral  sense  in  its 
rise  into  human  consciousness  is  a  communal  sense.  In 
recognizing  this  fact  we  do  not  jump  however  to  the  fur- 
ther conclusion  that  the  two  are  identical  —  the  moral 
sense  and  the  sense  of  social  relations  ;  the  two  are  wrapped 
up  together,  and  some  communal  sense  seems  always  to 
have  accompanied  the  rise  of  the  moral  sense.  But  the 
moral  judgment  contains  an  additional  element,  which  it 

1  For  fuller  argument  of  this  position  I  must  refer  to  my  Religions  Feeling, 
chs.  ili,  iv. 

2  This  characterizes  also  such  anticipation  of  morals  as  may  be  traced  among 
gregarious  animals  iu  what  Mr.  Spencer  calls  "  subhuman  justice." 


REALIZATION    OF    THE   MORAL    IDEAL  153 

brings  to  the  perception  of  an  action  needed  for  the  preser- 
vation of  tlie  family  or  tribe,  —  the  idea,  namely,  that  in 
the  communal  necessity  there  lies  also  a  human  obligation ; 
that  men  ou[/ht  so  to  live  and  work  together;  that  the 
common  need  involves  a  moral  order  of  existence.  There 
lies  herein  a  qualitative  judgment  as  well  as  a  quantitative 
measurement  of  social  interest. 

This  fundamental  difference  between  the  quantitative  calculation  of 
social  interest,  and  the  qualitative  estimate  of  it  as  obligatory,  is  usually 
passed  over  at  a  leap  by  writers  like  Mr.  Spencer,  with  the  phrases, 
"Evidently  then,"  or,  "  Hence  it  follows,"  or  words  to  that  effect.  The 
gaps  in  such  philosophic  attempts  to  construct  the  moral  out  of  the  non- 
moral  usually  appear  beneath  the  illative  phrases  which  bind  the  para- 
graphs together  in  apparently  logical  sequence. 

How  much  more  may  lie  latent  in  this  primitive  moral 
sense,  this  forming  child-consciousness  of  duty;  what 
ethical  ideas  of  things  eternal  and  divine  may  be  developed 
through  experience  from  it,  —  is  not  just  now  the  point 
which  concerns  us ;  the  single  fact  to  be  observed  in  this 
connection  is  that  some  moral  receptivity,  or  capability  of 
being,  which  corresponds  to  the  objective  relations  into 
which  men  are  born,  is  to  be  found  at  the  historic  begin- 
nings and  in  the  first  possibilities  of  man's  ethical  life. 

Corresponding  to  the  primeval  stage  of  moral  revelation 
there  arises  in  the  first  moral  being  some  spiritual  appre- 
hension of  what  is  right,  of  that  which  ought  to  be,  in  his 
relations  to  the  world  around  him.  This  is  only  saying 
that  the  moral  consciousness  is  rational  and  real ;  that  it 
springs  from  some  real,  although  at  first  it  may  be  very 
imperfect,  moral  perception  of  the  relations  of  the  subject 
to  the  objects  amid  which  he  awakes  to  thoughtful  and 
responsible  life.^  There  is  equal  veracity  in  the  methods 
of  life  in  its  rational  and  its  moral  beginnings ;  man  comes 
to  himself  by  the  same  powers  and  in  the  same  process  of 
rational  consciousness  in  these  two  relations  of  his  being, 
on  the  one  side  as  he  exists  in  the  realm  of  things,  and  on 
the  other  as  he  exists  in  the  kingdom  of  worths  ;  on  the 

1  For  a  clear  presentation  of  the  objectivity  of  moral  knowledge,  and  the 
relation  to  the  divine  which  is  given  in  the  idea  of  right,  see  Martineau, 
A  Study  of  Religion,  vol.  ii.  pp.  26  sq. 


154  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

two  sides,  that  is  to  say,  of  his  understanding  and  his 
moral  intelligence.  This  holds  true,  however  we  may  seek 
to  explain  the  ultimate  significance  of  these  moral  rela- 
tions (this  kingdom  of  worths),  into  some  sense  and  per- 
ception of  which  man  awakes.  Whether  the  moral  objec- 
tive be  described  in  terms  merely  of  pleasure,  or  as  the 
imperative  of  the  social  organism  of  which  the  individual 
is  a  part,  or  as  a  revelation  of  an  eternal  good  which  is 
realized  from  the  beginning  in  God  who  is  the  good,  —  the 
method  of  the  moral  consciousness  remains  the  same  ;  it 
begins  and  develops  through  a  simple  principle  of  recep- 
tive cognition,  or  power  of  objective  perception  and  dis- 
crimination between  the  qualitative  relations  of  our  lives. 
The  intellectual  consciousness  has  no  advantage  over  the 
moral  consciousness  in  the  original  principle  of  its  becom- 
ing, or  the  primitive  method  of  its  formation ;  for  both 
intellectually  and  morally  we  exist  alike  in  certain  rela- 
tions of  being;  and  through  the  impression  upon  us  of 
those  relations  amid  which  we  exist,  we  become  conscious 
of  their  existence  independently  of  our  subjective  will, 
and  learn  gradually  to  discriminate  and  define  them  with 
clear  perception  and  judgments  true  to  things.  So  that 
our  whole  consciousness  in  the  entirety  of  its  contents, 
intellectual  and  moral,  rests  ultimately  in  our  faith  in  the 
reality  of  what  is  given  immediately  to  consciousness  ; 
and  there  is  no  controversy  between  reason  and  faith  con- 
cerning the  original  validity  of  our  various  perceptions, 
but  only  a  difference  to  be  marked  between  one  faith,  the 
purely  intellectual,  and  its  apprehensions,  —  the  judgments 
of  the  understanding,  —  and  another  faith,  the  moral,  and 
the  judgments  of  conscience  in  the  sphere  of  worths. 
In  other  words,  the  one  part  of  our  consciousness  is  as 
valid  as  the  other  part ;  the  whole  stream  of  our  life  runs 
back  to  a  primitive  source  of  immediate  faith  in  conscious- 
ness and  the  contents  given  to  it ;  and  the  distinctions, 
consequently,  between  right  and  wrong  which  are  gained 
through  the  development  of  man's  primitive  moral  nature 
may  be  affirmed  as  confidently,  and  with  as  much  author- 
ity of  absolute  truth,  as  are  the  judgments  of  the  under- 


REALIZATION    OF   THE   MORAL   IDEAL  155 

standing  and  its  laws  of  logic.  One  must  become  an  utter 
sceptic,  —  cutting  himself  off  from  his  life  at  the  very 
fountains,  —  or  else  accept  in  its  fulness  the  outflow  of 
his  rational  and  moral  experience. 

The  fact  that  primitive  moral  perceptions  may  be  very 
confused,  or  misleading,  does  not  invalidate  this  principle 
of  moral  apprehension  any  more  than  the  failure  of  the 
little  child  to  coordinate  distances  and  to  walk  firmly 
invalidates  the  power  of  sense-perception.  The  principle 
of  mental  apprehension  in  either  case  is  to  be  trusted. 
The  capacity  of  the  mind  to  receive  is  not  a  vain  power. 
All  around  our  complex  life  we  can  come  into  relations  to 
things  which  shall  in  time  be  found  in  experience  to  be 
both  true  and  right.  The  soul  is  constituted  for  true  per- 
ception, intellectual  and  moral.  Life  may  grow  into  har- 
mony with  the  constitution  of  the  universe,  both  in  its 
physical  and  moral  order.  And  if  the  moral  conscious- 
ness of  humanity  is  a  real  growth  from  a  living  power  of 
moral  apprehension  and  assimilation,  we  might  expect  to 
observe  immaturity  in  the  first  manifestations  of  it ;  the 
perfect  fruits  of  the  Spirit  require  time. 

Assuming,  therefore,  this  power  of  true  moral  receptiv- 
ity, or  principle  of  immediate  moral  feeling-perception,  at 
the  source  of  the  whole  development  of  the  moral  con- 
sciousness of  man,  and  regarding  the  primitive  or  prehis- 
toric stage  of  the  world's  moral  development  as  character- 
ized by  this  immediacy  of  moral  feeling  without  clear  or 
strong  moral  discriminations  and  judgments,  we  pass  now 
to  the  next  and  greater  epoch  of  moral  history  and  to  its 
corresponding  principle. 

11.     THE   LEGAL   EPOCH  OF  MORAL   DEVELOPMENT  i 

1.  The  moral  environment  is  determined  by  the  command- 
ments. The  entrance  of  the  law  marks  a  new  epoch  in 
the  advance  of  the  moral  consciousness  alike  in  the  expe- 
rience of    each  growing  child,  and  in  the  history  of  the 

1  Modern  researches  in  ethnography  have  sncceeded  in  tracing  many  con- 
nections between  law  (in  the  political  sense)  and  primitive  cnstoms.  The  gain 
of  a  definite  legal  procedure  marks  a  distinct  epoch  in  the  history  of  a  com- 


156  CHEISTIAN   ETHICS 

human  race.  Previous  to  the  entrance  of  tne  command- 
ment there  may  be  more  or  less  of  vague,  general  moral 
feeling-perception,  but  there  can  be  no  sin  and  no  real 
righteousness.  The  entrance  of  the  law  ends  as  by  a 
stroke  the  first  age  of  moral  immaturity  and  innocence, 
and  ushers  in  the  next  epoch  of  moral  victory  or  of  moral 
defeat.  When  the  diffused  light  of  the  first  moral  con- 
sciousness has  gathered  itself  into  a  clear  focus  upon  some 
possible  act,  which  is  seen  to  be  either  clearly  right  or 
wrong,  then  moral  probation  has  begun,  and  the  moral 
choice  determines  the  direction  of  the  life  for  good  or  evil. 
We  can  imagine  that  a  beneficent  Creator  might  almost 
hesitate  and  shrink  from  bringing  the  man  of  his  creation 
forward  to  this  crisis  of  his  moral  growth,  and  its  possi- 
bilities of  good  or  evil ;  yet  man  must  be  pushed  on  to 
this  second  epoch  of  moral  knowledge  and  decision  if  he 
is  to  be  carried  forward,  whether  through  immediate  vic- 
tory or  long  subjection  to  sin  and  death,  towards  that 
matured  character  and  complete  righteousness  in  freedom 
which  is  the  ethical  goal  of  the  creation.  The  tree  of  for- 
bidden fruit  must  stand  in  the  garden  if  man  is  to  outgrow 
an  earthly  paradise.  So  the  commandment  enters,  and  on 
this  earth  at  least  the  possibility  of  evil  choice  has  become 
the  historic  solidarity  of  human  sin. 

It  has  been  said  that  prehistoric  psychology  is  largely 
chimerical ;  we  have  sought  to  conceive  what  that  prehis- 
toric capacity  for  moral  life  and  its  comparative  innocence 
might  be,  only  in  so  far  as  the  facts  of  our  present  moral 
experience  require  us  to  assume  the  moral  beginnings  of 
human  life.  What  we  distinctly  know  in  our  personal 
experience  is  the  moral  life  in  this  second  epoch  of  its 
process  as  a  life  under  the  law,  after  the  entrance  of  the 
commandment,  and  in  the  inheritance  of  sin.  In  the  his- 
tory of  the  people  of  Israel,  the  Book  of  the  Covenant 
and  the   growth  of   the   Mosaic  legislation  mark  an  era 

munity.  Still  further  ethical  inquiries  need  to  be  made  concerning  the  action  and 
reaction  between  methods  of  legal  procedure,  when  once  gained,  and  the  moral, 
and  even  theological,  conceptions  of  different  peoples.  (See  Tylor,  Primitive 
Culture,  vol.  ii.  p.  448.)  It  is,  however,  with  the  distinctive  era  of  the  law  in 
man's  moral  couseiousuess  of  it,  that  we  are  at  present  primarily  concerned. 


REALIZATION    OF   THE   MORAL    IDEAL  157 

which  is  distinctively  known  as  the  dispensation  of  the 
law.  The  commandments  of  the  law  may  be  said  to  have 
constituted  the  immediate  ethical  environment  of  the  moral 
life  of  Israel.  The  successive  codes  served  to  draw  closer 
a  legal  circle  of  observances  around  the  public  conscience 
of  the  chosen  people.  There  were,  however,  during  this 
period  two  open  ways  out  towards  a  larger  and  higher 
sphere  of  moral  motive  and  conception,  —  prophetism  and 
the  Wisdom  literature.  The  spirit  of  prophecy  often 
soared  above  the  legal  plane;  religion  in  the  prophetic 
inspiration  seems  at  times  about  to  take  wing  and  to  rise 
to  a  universal  gospel.  The  Wisdom  literature  marks  a 
lower,  more  prosaic,  yet  open  way  out  from  the  narrower 
view  of  the  law  as  a  system  of  outward  observances  to  a 
broader  conception  of  the  laws  of  life  which  are  to  be 
recognized  as  in  their  nature  ethical,  and  to  be  held  in 
reverence  as  the  summation  of  moral  truth  and  wisdom. 
The  fear  of  the  Lord,  which  is  taught  in  this  W^isdom  lit- 
erature, is  not  exactly  the  fear  of  punishment  which  was 
inculcated  by  the  priestly  codes  ;  if  less  distinctively  relig- 
ious in  its  recognition  of  the  commandment  as  proceeding 
from  God's  mouth,  or  written  in  his  ordinances,  it  was 
more  distinctly  ethical  in  its  recognition  of  the  great  laws 
of  life  which  wisdom  uttered  in  the  streets,  and  to  know 
which  is  to  understand  the  wisdom  of  the  Lord.^  We 
have  seen  how  the  prophetic  spirit  failed  in  Judaism ;  and 
even  the  more  practical  Wisdom  literature  proved  power- 
less against  the  increasing  legal  conception  both  of  religion 
and  of  righteousness  in  the  later  Pharisaism,  which  was 
the  cramping  and  asphyxiating  moral  environment  of  St. 
Paul  during  his  education  under  the  law.  Our  moral 
training  is  so  different  that  we  find  it  difficult  to  conceive 
the  life  under  the  law  of  commandments,  which  the  Apos- 
tle in  his  pre-Christian  experience  felt  as  though  he  were 
bound  to  a  body  of  death.  Yet  in  our  own  way,  although 
different,  we  may  still  know  what  life  under  law  is,  for  to 
a  large  extent  the  moral  motivation  of  the  modern  world 

1  This  is  the  conception  which  is  presented  in  the  first  nine  chapters  of  the 
book  of  Proverbs. 


158  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

proceeds  from  general  recognition  of  a  moral  order  within 
which  our  freedom  is  to  be  restrained. 

We  grow  up  surrounded  with  social  customs,  bound  by 
legal  statutes,  held  together  in  a  system  of  common  law 
and  through  an  inheritance  of  jurisprudence,  which  to- 
gether constitute  the  dispensation  of  the  law  to  modern 
communities,  and  which  to  many  men  is  almost  the  only 
moral  environment  of  which  they  take  cognizance.  The 
social  and  civil  order  is  to  such  minds  identical  almost 
with  the  moral  order.  This  legal  disj)ensation  assumes 
nobler  form  to  the  moral  philosopher.  All  outward  ordi- 
nances and  civil  institutions  are  recognized  by  him  as 
revelations  of  a  higher  law  and  as  having  their  perma- 
nence in  the  moral  order  of  the  universe.  There  are  eter- 
nal laws  of  life.  There  is  a  moral  inevitableness  of  good 
or  evil,  as  these  celestial  laws  of  life  are  followed  or 
broken.  The  natural  order,  which  physical  science  dis- 
closes, is  analogy  and  forceful  metaphor  for  a  moral  order 
no  less  infrustrable,  and  as  universal  in  its  dominion.  The 
apprehension  in  the  modern  world  of  this  higher  law  has 
found  noble  expression  in  this  famous  sentence  of  Kant: 
*'  Two  things  fill  the  mind  with  ever  new  and  increasing 
admiration  and  awe  the  oftener  and  the  more  steadily  they 
are  contemplated,  the  starry  heavens  above  me,  and  the 
moral  law  Avithin  me."  ^ 

Julius  Miiller  holds  rightly  that  "the  moral  law  as  the  rule  of  the 
human  will  is  none  other  than  moral  good"  ;  and  hence,  in  criticism  of 
Kant's  apostrophe  of  Duty,  he  remarks:  "The  impression  of  sublimity 
and  of  majesty  which  the  moral  law  makes  upon  the  mind  that  contemplates 
it,  provided  its  sensibilities  are  still  unblunted,  does  not  arise  from  its  form 
merely  as  an  unconditional  command,  but  from  the  very  nature  of  its  con- 
tents, upon  which  the  form  itself  depends."  This  is  only  saying  that  the 
law  reveals  a  real  moral  order,  that  the  commandment  puts  us  under  obli- 
gation to  a  real  righteousness.  The  characteristics  which  have  been  re- 
garded as  the  determinative  marks  of  the  moral  law  in  Christian  theology, 
alike  in  the  early  Catholic,  the  Medireval,  and  the  Protestant  Church,  are 
(as  noted  by  Miiller)  universality,  equality  for  all,  and  unchangeableness ; 
and,  in  consequence  of  these,  unconditional  authority.  See  Miiller's  dis- 
cussion of  law  in  his  Christian  Doctrine  of  Sin  (Eng.  Trans.),  vol.  i.  pp. 
32  sq. ;  also  Dorner,  System  der  Christ.  Sittenlehre,  s.  181. 


1  Kritik  der  j)ract.  Verniinft,  s.  288. 


REALIZATION    OF   THE   MORAL   IDEAL  159 

2.  The  subjective  principle  of  the  moral  life  which 
corresponds  to  this  stage  of  legal  environment,  may  be 
described  in  general  as  obedience.  The  moral  life  (which 
is  harmony  of  the  inward  and  outward  moral  conditions), 
consists  in  submission  of  the  will  to  the  imperative  of  the 
law.  The  legal  stage  is  reached  whenever  duty  is  con- 
ceived of  as  an  imperative  demanding  obedience.  The  com- 
mandment may  be  regarded  as  imposed  by  authority  from 
without ;  or  it  may  be  found  as  a  law  written  within ; 
but  in  either  case  it  is  authority,  and  the  principle  of  moral 
life  is  obedience.  In  Judaism  the  conception  of  law  as 
an  outward  commandment  of  the  Lord  was  gained ;  in 
Stoicism  the  conception  of  law  as  the  inward  nature  of 
man  was  attained ;  but  the  moral  principle  of  life  under 
the  law,  both  in  Judaism  with  its  word  of  the  Lord,  and  in 
Stoicism  Avith  its  inward  deification  of  man's  nature,  is 
essentially  the  same  ;  the  law  requires  entire  self-surrender 
of  the  individual  to  its  authority.  The  moral  welfare  of 
man  consists  in  absolute  submission  to  the  higher  law, 
whether  that  law  be  conceived  of  as  the  supreme  principle 
of  his  nature,  or  as  the  will  of  God.  This  legal  epoch 
of  morality,  and  the  growth  of  its  answering  principle  of 
obedience,  which  historically  was  sharply  defined  in  Juda- 
ism and  in  Stoicism,  —  in  the  final  outward  legalism  of  the 
religion  of  Israel,  and  the  final  inward  legalism  of  the 
religion  of  Eome,  —  was  not  a  simple  and  sudden  result  of 
the  moral  process  of  histor}^  For  within  the  legal  epoch 
itself  successive  stages  of  moral  development  may  be 
distinguished.  There  is  a  history  of  the  growth  of  the 
human  conscience  under  law.  And  in  order  that  we  may 
understand  the  course  of  the  moral  movement  of  history 
towards  the  moral  ideal,  these  several  successive  eras  in 
the  growth  of  conscience  under  the  legal  dispensation 
need  to  be  more  carefully  discriminated  and  defined. 

The  history  of  the  formation  of  conscience  under  the  law 
in  Israel,  is  of  all  moral  history  the  most  significant  and 
illuminative.  Comparative  ethics  may  find  in  the  life  of 
other  peoples,  and  the  remains  of  their  literatures,  traces  of 
a  similar  moral  process,  signs  of  the  same  moral  forces  in 


160  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

human  nature,  and  evidences  of  the  one  moral  movement 
of  history  through  the  hiw  towards  some  higher  ethical 
gospel ;  bat,  as  the  religion  of  Israel  was  distinctively  the 
religion  of  the  law,  so  the  moral  history  of  Israel  is  pre- 
eminently the  history  of  the  moral  consciousness  of  man 
in  and  through  the  legal  stages  of  its  development.  We 
have  then  to  distinguish  further  the  chief  stages  in  the 
growth  of  conscience  in  Israel  under  the  law  toward  the 
moral  consciousness  of  the  gospel. 

(1)  The  earlier  stage  in  the  growth  of  conscience  in 
Israel  was  the  tribal  and  communal.  Religion  was  an 
external  revelation,  and  morality  an  outward  obedience. 
The  angel  of  the  Lord  called  to  Abraham  out  of  heaven ;  ^ 
God's  word  was  to  be  obeyed  as  unquestioned  duty.  There 
was  at  this  stage  of  revelation  much  external  authority, 
and  little  exercise  of  private  judgment.  Indeed,  in  the 
earlier  literature  of  the  Bible  our  sharply  individualized 
word  conscience  is  not  to  be  found.  The  individual  was 
not  to  know  with  God,  but  rather  from  God ;  often  some 
external  sign  would  reveal  the  thing  to  be  done.  Duty 
w^as  not  knowing  the  morally  good,  like  a  son  with  God, 
but  submission  as  a  servant  to  the  word  which  proceeded 
as  a  direct  command  from  the  mouth  of  the  Almighty. 

Such  was  the  moral  envii"onment  of  external  revelation, 
and  the  moral  principle  of  implicit  obedience  in  Abraham's 
day.  The  simple  biblical  narrative  reflects  with  perfect 
artlessness  this  moral  life  and  consciousness  of  the  primi- 
tive patriarchal  age.  What  is  riglit  for  Abraham  ?  What- 
ever God  orders.  What  shall  Abraham  do  ?  Not  what  he 
thinks  God  ought  to  desire  of  him;  but  he  shall  brirg  the 
sacrifice  which  God  has  required  of  him.  The  story  of 
the  offering  of  Isaac  can  be  ethically  interpreted  only  as 
we  put  ourselves  back  into  the  primitive  moral  conditions 
of  Abraham's  life.  The  question  which  on  our  moral  plain 
at  once  arises  is.  How  could  Abraham  have  supposed  that 
Jehovah  could  have  required  of  him  the  life  of  his  first- 
born son  ?  We  see  from  the  result,  when  a  ram  was  sub- 
stituted for  the  son  whom  Abraham  had  bound  to  the  altar, 

1  Gen.  xxii.  11. ;  cf.  xxii.  1,  2;  xii.  1,  4;  xvii.  1-11. 


REALIZATION   OF   THE   MORAL   IDEAL  161 

that  God  did  not  desire  the  offering  of  human  sacrifices. 
Had  Abraham  known  God  at  the  mountain's  foot  as  well 
as  he  knew  him  at  the  mountain's  top,  there  Avould  have 
been  no  need  of  that  long,  silent,  heart-breaking  journey 
up  the  mountain's  side.  The  ethical  problem,  as  we  now 
read  the  narrative  in  the  light  of  our  later  and  better  reve- 
lation, is  not  how  Jehovah  could  have  commanded  the 
offering  of  Isaac,  but  how  Abraham  for  a  moment  could 
have  believed  that  such  was  the  will  of  the  Lord.^  No 
external  authority  could  impose  such  an  act  on  us  as  moral 
duty.  No  outward  sign,  no  apparent  miracle,  w^ould  lead 
the  man  who  has  known  God  through  Christ  to  believe 
that  an  act  destructive  of  the  whole  truth  of  fatherhood 
could  really  be  required  by  Him  from  whom  every  father- 
hood on  earth  and  in  heaven  is  named.^  We  should  abide 
by  the  inner  light,  and  doubt  the  outward  vision.  We 
should  cling  to  the  known  moral  truth,  and  wait  for  the  ex- 
planation of  any  seemingly  contradictory  sign  from  heaven. 
Abraham,  however,  was  but  a  moral  pupil  under  the  law. 
The  right  to  him  was  what  Jehovah  willed.  Duty  was 
unquestioning  obedience  to  the  commandment.  It  was  not 
the  son's  knowledge  ivith  the  Father  of  the  morally  good 
that  led  Abraham  to  prepare  for  the  sacrifice  of  Isaac. 
He  might  trust  that  in  some  unknown  way  the  command- 
ment would  not  prevent  the  promise ;  he  might  hope  that 
by  some  divine  favor  the  joy  which  he  had  found  in  his 
first-born  might  not  be  taken  wdiolly  and  forever  from 
him ;  but  there  was  the  commandment  of  the  Lord,  as  he 
could  receive  it,  and  as  he  understood  it;  and  obedience 
was  the  only  righteousness  he  knew.  It  was  for  him  the 
righteousness  of  faith.  A  perfect  trust  in  the  will  of  God 
characterized  his  obedience.  Such  committal  of  himself 
to  what  he  had  apprehended  to  be  the  word  of  the  Lord,  — 
entire,  unquestioning,  absolute  surrender  of  the  man  to  the 
will  of  the  Almighty,  —  was  his  great  act  of  obedience,  and 
the  moral  heroism  of  his  faith;  and  as  such  it  was  counted 

1  Canon  Mozley,  Rulinr/  Ideas  in  Early  Ages,  Lect.  ii.,  dwells  at  length  on 
this  question.     The  answer  is  to  be  found  in  the  sacrificial  customs  of  the  age. 
-  Eph.  iii.  15. 


162  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

to  him  for  righteousness.  The  writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews,  with  a  true  historic  insight,  takes  Abraham's 
name  from  one  of  the  earliest  chapters  of  the  history  of  the 
true  religion  as  a  type  of  the  man  of  faith.  Nothing  better 
than  this  simple  biblical  story  illustrates  alike  the  neces- 
sary conditions  of  the  beginning  of  man's  moral  life  under 
the  law,  and  the  corresponding  principle  of  moral  submis- 
sion which  was  its  obedience  of  faith.^ 

The  earlier  communal  stage  of  the  development  of  con- 
science has  its  analogue  in  the  forming  conscience  of  the 
little  child.  There  aj^pears  at  first  in  the  mere  child  little 
independent  or  individual  sense  of  right  and  wrong ;  the 
commandment  of  the  home  is  moral  law  to  the  child.  Yet 
under  the  law  of  the  home,  and  through  the  discipline  of 
obedience,  the  child's  moral  nature  begins  to  gather  sub- 
stance and  character,  and  to  grow  into  an  independent  and 
firm  conscience  of  its  own. 

(2)  The  next  stage  in  the  history  of  conscience  in  Israel 
was  the  era  in  which  Israel  became  conscious  of  itself  as 
the  people  of  God  —  the  era  of  the  national  conscience 
under  the  laAV. 

The  beginnings  of  a  distinct  and  determinate  social  con- 
science appear  in  the  age  of  Moses.  A  lawgiver  goes  down 
to  the  people  with  the  tables  of  the  law  in  his  hand.  The 
Book  of  the  Covenant  is  the  constitution  of  a  people.  In 
Israel  moral  authority  was  still  external  and  legal ;  but  it 
was  no  longer  a  merely  individual  understanding  of  some 
word  of  the  Lord,  nor  was  it  following  a  divine  call  by 
the  solitary  father  of  a  single  family.  The  people  are  com- 
manded to  be  a  kingdom  of  priests,  an  holy  nation.^  Obli- 
gation has  become  a  national  sense  of  the  service  wdiich  is 
owed  to  the  God  of  Israel.  Sinai  with  its  mighty  thunder- 
ings  and  voice  of  Jehovah,  is  as  the  visible  and  command- 

1  The  further  question  hoAv  could  God  tempt  or  try  Abraham  by  allowing 
him  for  an  liour  to  mistake  His  real  intention  towards  Isaac,  belongs  to  the 
theology  rather  than  to  the  ethics  of  the  Old  Testament.  The  moral  principle 
of  the  divine  treatment  of  Abraham  must  be  found  in  God's  wliole  educational 
method  and  purpose  —  a  subject  which  I  have  elsewhere  discussed  at  some 
length  in  the  third  chapter  of  Old  Faiths  in  Neio  Light. 

2  Ex.  xix.  G  (J.  E.) ;  later  (in  P.)  Lev.  xi.  44,  45. 


REALIZATION   OF    THE   MORAL   IDEAL  163 

ing  conscience  of  the  whole  people  of  Gocl.  Consequently 
all  duties,  privileges,  and  hopes  of  the  Israelite  were  bound 
up  in  the  national  covenant  with  the  Lord.  The  individ- 
ual man  finds  his  life  measured  and  weighed  for  him  in 
all  its  relations  and  obligations  by  the  law  of  his  nation. 
The  person  has  moral  being  and  assurance  of  prosperity 
only  in  the  moral  being  and  welfare  of  the  people. 
Mosaism  introduces  a  social-legal  stage  of  moral  develop- 
ment. Israel  is  the  historic  example  of  a  religious  social- 
ism. The  moral  consciousness  of  Israel  is  the  public 
opinion  of  a  people  which  had  been  formed  and  fashioned 
under  one  law  and  in  one  moral  mould.^  The  morality  of 
Israel  is  that  of  the  social  group  or  organism.  The  age  of 
acute  individuality  is  not  yet  come.  Protestantism  does 
not  belong  to  the  Mosaic  era  of  the  history  of  Israel. 

(3)  In  the  development  of  the  religious  and  moral 
consciousness  of  Israel  through  the  prophets  the  signs  of 
another  and  larger  movement  become  apparent.^ 

Both  in  religion  and  ethics  a  tendency  towards  univer- 
salism  modifies  the  intense  particularism  of  the  Hebrew 
consciousness.  The  covenant  of  Jehovah  had  been  made 
with  the  one  people  of  His  choice,  but  it  contains  a  blessing 
for  other  nations.  Israel  shall  still  be  exalted  as  the  moun- 
tain of  the  Lord ;  but  from  the  house  of  Jacob  many  peo- 
ples shall  be  taught  the  ways  of  the  Lord.^  Together  with 
this  broadening  of  the  religious  view,  the  ethical  concep- 

1  This  general  characteristic  is  not  affected  by  critical  discrimination  be- 
tween the  different  codes  except  as  the  successive  codes  served  to  accentuate 
and  develop  the  legal  national  consciousness. 

2  The  prophetic  era  preceded  in  time  the  completed  law ;  the  finished 
priestly  code  is  now  generally  regarded  as  belonging  to  a  late  period ;  and 
Hebrew  particularism  became  marked  after  the  age  of  the  great  prophets.  But 
in  the  order  of  spiritual  development  the  moral  and  religious  consciousness  of 
the  prophets  is  a  distinct  advance  over  the  legal  conception.  Moreover,  in  the 
earlier  period,  a  larger  core  of  legal  customs  and  observances  than  literary 
critics  (like  Kuenen,  Hist,  of  Israel,  i.  ss.  274  seq.)  have  allowed,  may  be  found 
to  be  required  as  the  result  of  a  more  scientific  study  of  the  institutions  of 
Israel  from  a  sociological  point  of  view.  There  are  analogies  and  laws  of  soci- 
ology under  which  the  current  literary  criticism  of  the  Old  Testament  needs  to 
be  much  more  thoroughly  tested.  A  conservative  critical  estimate  of  the  legal 
basis  in  the  earlier  period  of  the  history  of  Israel  is  given  by  Driver,  Int.  to  the 
Lit.  of  the  0.  T.,  pp.  144  seq.  Cf.  Reuss,  Geschichte  der  Heil.  Schriften,  i.  ss. 
70-93.  3  Is.  ii.  2-4. 


164  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

tions  of  the  prophets  overflow  the  limits  of  what  may  be 
called  the  conscience  of  the  social  group.  The  modern  con- 
ception of  international  law  is  still  far  from  the  minds  of 
the  kings  and  the  prophets  of  Judah;  but  moral  princi- 
ples and  religious  hopes  of  universal  validity  gain  place 
and  power  amid  the  peculiar  obligations  of  the  covenant 
people  and  above  the  ceremonial  of  their  law.^ 

This  religious  and  moral  broadening  of  the  prophetic 
teaching  is  accompanied  at  the  same  time  by  a  spiritual 
deepening  of  the  life  of  the  true  Israel.  Morality  is  seen 
to  be  something  more  inward  and  spiritual  than  an  exter- 
nal observance   of    the  law.     There   is  somethino-   better 

o 

than  sacrifice.^  Running  parallel  with  these  tendencies 
towards  universalism  and  spirituality  in  the  religious- 
ethical  life  of  Israel  there  may  be  noted  likewise  an 
increasing  sense  of  the  worth  of  the  individual,  and,  con- 
sequently, of  the  personal  interest  of  the  individual  soul 
in  the  future  life. 

Our  sharply  individualized  moral  substantive,  conscience,  it  is  true, 
is  still  not  to  be  found  even  in  the  later  prophets.  And  it  has  been  a 
debated  question  whether  the  hope  of  personal  immortality  was  taught 
in  the  Old  Testament,  or  entered  into  the  thought  of  the  common  peo- 
ple of  Israel.  It  would  be  going  beyond  the  facts  to  deny  that  the 
personal  right  and  the  future  destiny  of  the  individual  soul  were  un- 
thought  of,  and  untouched  by  any  light  of  revelation,  in  the  whole  Mosaic 
period;  nor  are  we  to  infer  from  the  absence  of  our  distinctive  word 
conscience,  that  the  reign  of  the  law  was  wholly  a  reign  of  external 
authority.  For  the  Hebrew  had  his  own  word,  the  heart,  to  denote  the 
individual's  participation  in  the  religious  consciousness  of  the  nation.  But 
the  predominant  hope  of  Israel  was  the  hope  of  social  immortality,  the 
triumph  of  the  people  of  God.  Not  until  the  people  had  entered  the 
shadow  of  the  eclipse  of  the  hope  of  Israel,  during  the  dark  and  disap- 
pointing Maccabean  age,  did  the  more  individualized  word  conscience 
make  its  appearance.  (Wisdom  xvii.  11.  In  Ecc.  x.  20,  the  word  means 
nothing  more  than  our  word  consciousness.)  In  that  same  time  of  trouble 
and  bitter  national  disappointment,  the  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of 
the  individual  grew  to  the  definiteness  which  it  showed  in  the  teachings 
of  the  Pharisees  in  our  Lord's  day. 

(4)  The  fourth  stage  in  the  growth  of  conscience  is 
that  of  the  fully  developed  individual  conscience  under 

1  See  Is.  xix.  10-25;  xlv.  22-24;  xli.  1,  4;  Ps.  Ixxxvii.  4;  Zech.  xlv. 

2  Ps.  xl.  G-8;  Is.  1.  11;  Hos.  vi.  6.  This  is  to  bo  found  earher  also  in  1  Sam. 
XV.  22. 


REALIZATION   OF   THE   MORAL   IDEAL  165 

the  law.  If  we  turn  from  a  chapter  of  moral  judgment  in 
Isaiah,  or  a  lamentation  of  Jeremiah,  or  even  from  a  peni- 
tential psalm,  to  the  seventh  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Romans,  we  shall  see  at  once  the  similarity  and  the  still 
greater  contrast  betAveen  the  period  of  moral  development, 
which  has  just  been  described,  and  the  later  and  fully 
formed  moral  consciousness  of  the  individual  soul  under 
the  law. 

These  two  moral  periods  indeed  are  alike  characterized 
by  the  objectifying  of  morals  in  an  outward  law.  Paul's 
conception  of  the  law  as  a  commandment  of  Jehovah  is  no 
less  supreme  than  was  Isaiah's.  The  moral  imperative  is 
still  the  spoken  word  of  Jehovah.  As  a  law  of  command- 
ments it  requires  complete  submission  and  obedience  in 
every  particular  of  it  on  the  part  of  man.  And  that  law  of 
commandments  is  holy,  just,  and  good. 

But  beneath  the  resemblance  a  significant  contrast  ap- 
pears in  the  profounder  sense  of  individual  responsibility 
and  condemnation.  God  is  still  the  Sovereign  Law^giver; 
yet  not  the  lawgiver  for  the  people  only,  but  also  imme- 
diately and  personally  of  the  individual  soul.  God  is  the 
Judge,  but  not  of  the  nation  of  Israel  only ;  He  is  Paul's 
judge ;  and  Paul  is  himself  bound  to  sin  and  without  right- 
eousness in  the  sight  of  God. 

This  contrast  between  the  earlier  forms  and  the  latest 
stage  of  the  growth  of  conscience  in  Israel  will  become 
strikingly  apparent  when  we  put  side  by  side  several 
expressions  of  the  sense  of  sin  which  may  be  gathered 
from  the  sacred  literature  of  these  different  periods.  * 

Thus,  taking  the  narratives  as  they  read,  in  the  account 
of  Adam's  fall  in  the  book  of  Genesis  only  a  few  words 
indicate  what  was  the  sense  of  sin  felt  by  the  first  man 
who  became  conscious  of  wrong-doing.  It  seems  to  have 
been  mainly  a  feeling  of  fear.  Adam's  sense  of  sin  was 
like  a  child's  fear  of  punishment,  ''  I  heard  thy  voice  in 
the  garden,  and  I  Avas  afraid."  ^  The  sense  of  wrong  was 
apparently  coincident  with  the  feeling  of  fear.  Fear  fol- 
lows the  first  sin.     Man's  first  sin  was  man's  first  fear.     If 

1  Gen.  iii.  10. 


166  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

the  literary  materials  had  been  preserved,  by  means  of 
which  we  might  depict,  side  by  side,  Adam's  moral  con- 
sciousness of  fear  after  his  sin,  and  Paul's  profound 
conviction  of  his  life-long  failure  to  become  a  righteous 

"  man,  we  should  probably  discover  between  the  two  this 
antithesis  of  a  vague,  regretful,  timid  sense  of  something 
gone  wrong,  and  the  sharply  defined,  piercing  sense  of  per- 
sonal dishonor  and  guilt.  Death  was  something  unknown, 
and  vaguely  to  be  feared  —  the  shadow  of  a  coming  evil 
— to  that  first  sinner;  sin  was  death,  a  living  death,  a  hope- 
less loss,  and  bitter  misery  of  being,  to  that  full-grown, 
moral  man  who  would  keep  the  law  of  God,  and  could  not 
do  it.  Adam  after  his  sin  could  not  possibly  have  com- 
posed a  narrative  of  personal  experience  like  that  contained 
in  the  seventh  chapter  of  Romans;  probably,  could  such  a 
transcript  from  man's  later  experience  of  sin  have  been 
read  to  him,  he  would  only  have  vaguely  understood  its 
moral  intensity  of  conscious  guilt  and  despair.^ 

Very  interesting,  and  instructive  also,  as  distinguishing 
these  eras  in  the  growth  of  conscience,  is  the  comparison 
which  we  may  make  without  drawing  at  all  u^^on  our 
imagination,  between  the  same  chapter  of  Romans  and  the 
fifty-first  psalm.2  The  psalm  is  like  a  child's  cry  of  con- 
trition in  its  mother's  lap  :  "  Have  mercy  upon  me,  O  God, 
according  to  thy  lovingkindness ;  according  to  the  multi- 
tude of  thy  tender  mercies  blot  out  my  transgressions." 
But  the  chapter  of  Romans  is  the  cry  of  a  man's  soul 
from  out  the  depths :  ''  O  wretched  man  that  I  am !  who 

*shall  deliver  me  out  of  the  body  of  this  death  ? "  The 
former  is  a  youth's  quick  contrition,  and  easily  reviving 
hope  :  "  Make  me  to  hear  joy  and  gladness ;  tliat  the  bones 
which  thou  hast  broken  may  rejoice."  The  latter  is  a 
man's  soberer  recognition  of  his  moral  inability,  and  his 
profounder  moral  despair :  "  For  I  know  that  in  me,  that 
is,  in  my  flesh,  dwelleth  no  good  thing:   for  to   will  is 

1  This  comparison  is  not  affected  by  critical  questions  concevninc:  the  origin 
of  the  first  chapters  of  Genesis ;  for,  whatever  the  original  documents,  they 
represent  an  earlier,  not  the  final  Judaic  consciousness  of  sin. 

2  If  this  is  a  national  psalm,  as  the  critics  suppose,  its  confession  of  sin  is 
put  in  a  personal  form. 


REALIZATION    OF   THE   MOr.AL   IDEAL  167 

present  with  me,  but  to  do  that  which  is  good  is  not." 
The  former  is  quick  to  own  the  human  sinfuhiess  from 
which  the  transgression  which  is  confessed  had  sprung: 
"Behold,  I  was  shapen  in  iniquity;  and  in  sin  did  my 
mother  conceive  me."  In  the  latter  the  dark  fact  of  orig- 
inal sin  falls  into  the  background,  and  the  sense  of  personal 
guilt  pervades  with  its  deep  gloom  the  moral  conscious- 
ness: "  But  I  am  carnal,  sold  under  sin."  The  moral  law 
as  the  will  of  God  is  acknowledged  in  the  psalm:  "  Against 
thee,  thee  only,  have  I  sinned,  and  done  that  which  is 
evil  in  thy  sight:  that  thou  mayest  be  justified  when  thou 
speakest,  and  be  clear  when  thou  judgest."  In  the  confes- 
sion of  sin  in  Romans  the  law  is  recognized  as  in  itself 
something  holy,  and  the  commandment  is  good.  The  psalm 
is  the  weeping  of  a  penitent  child  who  has  done  a  wrong 
act,  and  is  distressed  by  the  shame  of  it.  The  confession 
of  sin  in  Romans  is  the  voice  of  a  man  who  has  learned 
how  helpless  and  worthless  he  is  before  the  pure  righteous- 
ness of  God,  and  who  knows  that  he  must  perish  as  one 
bound  to  death  unless  he  can  become  upright  and  stand  as 
a  just  soul  among  the  just  in  the  presence  of  the  God  of 
righteousness.  We  turn  to  the  penitential  psalm  when 
we  would  mourn  over  particular  sins ;  we  read  that  pro- 
founder  chapter  of  St.  Paul's  experience  when  we  would 
fathom  our  deepest  personal  consciousness  of  the  human 
sinfulness  from  which  we  would  be  delivered  as  from  a 
body  of  death. 

These  stages  of  moral  development  which  can  be  dis- 
tinguished in  the  sacred  literature  of  the  Hebrew  people, 
may  likewise  be  observed,  though  with  less  conspicuous 
demarcation,  in  the  moral  history  and  literatures  of  the 
Gentiles.  The  primitive,  child-like  moral  consciousness  is 
artlessly  reflected  in  the  songs  of  Homer;  Athens  presents 
a  decidedly  communal  conscience,  or  the  conscience  of  a 
distinct  social  group.  One  national  conception  of  virtue  as 
well-being  or  happiness,  in  the  large  sense  of  the  word, 
pervades  the  moral  philosophy  of  the  Greeks.  Finally, 
Roman  Stoicism  is  the  determination  of  the  individual 
conscience   in  the  firm  mould  of  law,  according  to  the 


168  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

unalterable  nature  of  things;  Stoicism  marks  the  last 
stand  of  the  solitary  conscience  in  its  own  invincible  right 
against  the  world. 

Thus  both  embryologically  in  the  birth  and  growth  of 
the  individual,  and  historically  in  the  age-long  moral 
development  of  man,  may  be  witnessed  these  several  moral 
epochs ;  after  the  prehistoric,  nature  state,  the  family  or 
communal  age,  the  national  and  legal  era,  and  eventually 
the  accentuated  individual  age  of  conscience.  Along 
moral  courses  thus  marked  and  distinguished,  and  through 
stadia  of  development  which  succeed  one  another  in  con- 
formity to  the  nature  of  ethical  being,  the  moral  creation 
presses  on  towards  the  realization  of  the  moral  Ideal, 
which  in  the  beginning  was  with  God. 

3.  From  this  description  of  the  successive  moral  eras 
up  to  the  final  legal  stage  before  Christianity,  we  pass 
next  to  a  closer  determination  of  the  moral  results  which 
are  thus  reached,  or  the  moral  contents  of  consciousness 
which  are  gained  in  this  period  of  moral  development. 

(1)  There  emerges  clearly  at  this  stage  the  idea  of 
right,  and  its  imperative.  Man  has  become  conscious  of 
himself  as  existing  under  a  higher  law  which  commands 
him  with  an  absolute  obligation.  It  is  not  a  physical 
necessity  which  he  has  no  choice  but  to  follow;  neither  is 
it  an  sesthetic  judgment  to  which  he  pleases  to  conform ;  it 
is  a  commandment  of  right  which  he  recognizes  as  having 
authority  over  him,  and  which  in  his  moral  freedom  he 
ought  to  obey.  The  conception  of  right  as  the  one  abso- 
lute imperative  of  conduct,  becomes  in  this  epoch  of  moral 
history  clearly  developed  and  discriminated  from  all  other 
ideas. 

(a)    The  Origin  of  the  Idea  of  Right. 

Whatever  may  be  our  attempted  explanation  of  the  rise 
of  conscience  and  the  emergence  of  moral  ideas  in  human 
history,  our  account  must  be  equal  to  the  historic  facts; 
our  theory  should  contain  the  full  content  of  the  moral 
consciousness  at  this  stage  of  its  development.  As  one 
moral  resultant  of  history  is  this  distinct  and  luminous 
idea  of  right.     It  shines  like  a  star  in  the  moral  firmament. 


REALIZATION   OF   THE   MOKAL   IDEAL  169 

It  were  no  account  of  a  star  to  say  that  it  is  sodium,  or 
hydrogen  gas,  or  any  or  all  of  the  elementary  gases  whose 
lines  may  be  read  off  in  the  stellar  spectrum.  For  what 
we  see  is  not  sodium,  nor  any  of  these  elements,  but  the 
star ;  and  the  star,  however  it  may  have  been  formed,  or 
whatever  elements  simpler  than  itself  may  enter  into  its 
constitution,  is  itself  a  distinct,  separate,  and  single  sphere 
of  light ;  the  mere  enumeration  of  its  supposed  elements 
does  not  describe  the  star,  nor  account  for  its  separate 
shining  in  the  sky.  The  star  as  a  star  is  object  of  our 
vision.  What  is  its  character  as  a  star?  What  is  the 
principle  of  the  combination  of  its  elements;  what  the 
order  in  which  it  consists  ?  Similarly  is  it  with  the  judg- 
ment of  right  in  the  consciousness  of  man.  Our  human 
idea  of  right  may  not  have  come  to  be  what  it  is  except 
through  a  long  process  of  clevelojDment ;  it  may  not  be  with- 
out traces  of  simple  moral  feelings,  elementary  instincts, 
or  earlier  and  separable  associations.  If  it  could  be 
shown  how  this  idea  has  been  formed,  and  consolidated, 
and  rounded  into  a  clear  and  fixed  moral  idea  through 
age-long  processes,  under  fervent  heat  amid  the  passions 
of  humanity ;  such  natural  history  of  the  process  of  the 
formation  of  this  distinctive  idea  of  right,  although  inter- 
esting and  instructive,  would  not  explain  the  essential 
character  of  the  idea,  or  the  moral  principle  of  its  forma- 
tion ;  it  would  not  take  away  its  distinct  and  supreme 
existence  and  light  as  a  fixed  moral  idea  in  the  mind  of 
man.  For,  as  just  intimated,  the  very  thing  in  the  skies 
to  be  understood  is  the  nature  or  tendency  of  the  creation 
which,  out  of  whatever  elements,  at  a  given  period  makes 
the  appearance  of  the  distinct  and  separate  star  possible ; 
from  some  beginnings  the  creation  has  moved  towards 
these  results  of  the  fixed  stars  of  heaven.  And  this  principle 
of  combination,  order,  and  light  which  finally  sets  the  stars 
in  their  places,  is  the  real  mystery,  the  true  cause  of  the 
whole  astronomic  order;  so  in  the  moral  universe  the 
force  which  organizes  whatever  natural  elements  of  life 
into  a  moral  consciousness  and  order,  is  the  supernal  ethical 
fact. 


170  CHEISTIAN  ETHICS 

Somewhere  in  the  process  of  moral  forming,  at  some 
time  in  the  course  of  the  evolution,  the  power  to  shape  and 
to  organize  the  human  elements  for  this  idea  of  right  must 
have  laid  hold  of  them.  The  moral  idea  could  not  have 
emerged  from  the  elementary  chaos  of  nature,  unless  the 
potency  and  the  power  of  it  had  in  some  way  entered  into 
and  become  a  law  of  the  formation  of  those  elements  of 
humanity.  You  can  never  get  a  star  in  space,  if  there  be 
no  principle  of  star-formation  in  the  original  nebula. 

We  are  now  reasoning  from  the  distinctive  individuality 
of  the  resultant  moral  idea  back  to  its  cause  in  the  moral 
antecedents  of  human  nature ;  these,  we  argue,  must  have 
contained  from  of  old  the  moral  potential  because  the  final 
result  is  the  distinctive  idea  of  right. 

(h}    The  Nature  of  the  Idea  of  Right. 

The  reasoning  may  be  inverted,  and  it  may  be  claimed 
not  merely  that  an  anatysis  of  the  contents  of  our  common 
idea  of  right  serves  to  separate  this  distinctive  moral 
whole  into  several  elements,  some  of  which  may  be  un- 
moral, such  as  custom,  fear  of  punishment,  sympathy,  or 
whatever  else  of  human  instinct  or  habit  may  enter  into 
the  fully  formed  conception  of  right ;  but  also  that  after  we 
have  sifted  from  the  moral  idea  these  natural  elements  of 
it,  there  is  left  a  moral  precipitate,  which  defies  analysis 
into  anything  simpler;  and  this  moral  element,  which 
remains  after  all  possible  scientific  analysis  of  conscience,  is 
the  characteristic  thing,  the  key  to  the  whole  combination, 
the  constitutive  element  of  the  fully  formed  or  organized 
moral  judgment  of  right  and  wrong.  The  right  is  the  one 
thing  which  ought  to  be  done.  The  obligation  of  the 
sense  of  the  right  is  the  unanalyzable  and  ultimate  element 
of  the  idea  of  right.  Alike  in  the  history  of  the  race, 
and  in  the  life  of  the  individual  soul,  there  comes  a  time 
when,  on  the  one  hand,  the  right  is  recognized  as  an 
authoritative  law  of  duty,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  obedi- 
ence is  seen  to  be  the  only  true  position  of  the  will.  Duty 
becomes  an  august  power  before  whose  authority  appetite 
is  dumb,  and  passion  must  be  bound.  No  other  moral 
word  can  be  substituted  for  the  word  duty.     Even  the 


EEALIZATION   OF   THE   MORAL   IDEAL  171 

philosophers  who  would  put  labored  circumlocutions  in 
the  place  of  it,  are  compelled  to  fall  back  upon  this  simple 
and  ultimate  word,  which  the  common  people  can  under- 
stand, and  for  which  no  other  can  be  made  to  serve  in  the 
language  of  the  world's  moral  life,  —  duty.  That  glorious 
and  supreme  idea  may  rise,  like  another  day,  on  the  mind 
which  has  been  confused  in  the  half-understood  instincts 
and  misleading  appetites  of  nature  ;  but  when  once  it  is 
seen,  it  shines  with  its  own  clear  light;  it  is  seen  to  be 
itself,  and  is  not  to  be  resolved  into  anything  lower  or  less 
divine.  The  right  is  right  always ;  when  once  perceived, 
there  is  nothing  more  to  be  said;  it  is  light  that  illumines; 
it  is  truth  in  wdiich  the  way  is  made  plain ;  reason  has  no 
choice  but  to  follow. 

The  new  moral  era  which  began  with  a  clear  perception 
of  right  as  right,  was  not  indeed  discontinuous  with  any 
preceding,  more  nebulously  moral  life  of  man ;  all  the 
ethical  as  well  as  physical  processes  of  life  are  to  be  con- 
ceived of  as  continuous;  but,  nevertheless,  it  was  a  new 
era,  and  the  dawn  of  another  day  of  life. 

(2)  With  the  idea  of  the  right  which  follows  the  en- 
trance of  the  commandment,  there  arises  also  the  moral 
consciousness  of  the  rights  of  men. 

In  the  biblical  history  human  rights  are  seen  to  be  se- 
cured in  the  original  divine  right,  which  is  revealed  in  the 
law.  The  righteousness  of  God  is  the  ground  of  human 
rights.  There  is  a  divine  order  to  be  observed  by  men  in 
their  relations  to  one  another.  This  idea  of  a  higher  right 
is  precedent  to,  and  secures  in  its  eternal  sanction,  all  per- 
sonal rights.  From  the  primal  duty  of  a  man  to  conform 
to  the  divine  righteousness  follows  his  obligation  to  main- 
tain his  own  rights  and  the  rights  of  his  neighbor.^ 

In  modern  philosophical  ethics  the  origin  of  the  idea  of 

1  Gen.  iv.  9-10.  The  blood  of  the  first  murdered  man  cries  unto  the  Lord. 
God  makes  Cain  his  brother's  keeper.  Men  are  to  bring  their  causes  before 
God;  Ex.  xxii.  7-9.  The  second  table  of  human  duties  and  rights  follows  the 
first  table  of  obligations  towards  God.  Similarly  the  enforcement  of  various 
human  rights  in  the  Mosaic  law  proceeds  on  the  ground  of  a  divine  law  of 
right,  and  the  primary  obligation  of  the  people  in  their  covenant  with  God. 
(Ex.  xxi.  6,  22;  sxii.  9;  Deut.  v.  32-33;  yii.  12;  xxiv.  15,  etc. ;  Rom,  xii.  1.) 


172  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

rights  has  been  found,  not  in  some  supposed  social  contract, 
or  primarily  in  the  necessity  of  social  co-operation,  but  in 
the  ethical  nature  of  man  —  in  the  nature  of  personality. 

SeeUlrici,  Gott  und  3fenschen,  vol.  ii.  s.  219  ff.  "  For  in  reality  man  is 
not  born  with  rights,  but  only  with  duties,  and  only  for  this  reason  does 
he  have  right  to  demand  that  the  possibility  shall  be  secured  to  him  of 
performing  his  duty.  His  rights  follow  only  from  his  duties,  and  hence 
can  be  derived  only  from  them"  (s.  231).  Any  other  derivation  of  the 
idea  of  right,  Ulrici  argues,  takes  from  it  ethical  obligation,  and  in  the  last 
analysis  makes  might  right.  Similarly  Dorner  derives  rights  from  duty  : 
"  The  person  has  to  maintain  his  personal  rights  as  organ  of  the  moral 
idea  and  for  its  sake,  but  not  from  egoism."  "  The  original  right  of  man, 
namely,  the  true  basal  right  (Grundrecht) ,  which  follows  from  his  duty, 
is  the  right  to  be  a  moral  being"  (Christ.  Sittenlehre,  ss.  205-208).  Per 
contra  Stahl  argued  that  rights  are  not  consequences  of  duty,  but  an  imme- 
diate contents  of  an  objective  order  of  right.  (Phil,  des  Rechtes,  ii.  s. 
222.)  Lotze,  however,  says  :  "Our  right  is  that  which  we  first  feel  as  duty 
towards  others,  and  consequently  also  regard  as  the  duty  of  others  towards 
us  "  (Mikrokosmus,  vol.  ii.  s. 413).  Mr.  Mulford  has  tersely  said  :  "Rights 
belong  to  man,  since  in  his  nature  he  is  constituted  as  a  person"  (The 
Nation,  p.  73).  While  recognizing  the  correspondence  of  rights  and 
duties,  he  derives  both  from  personality  (p.  101)  ;  it  is  in  the  realization 
of  his  personality,  which  is  made  in  the  image  of  God,  that  man  has 
both  rights  and  duties.  This  immediate  connection  of  rights  with  per- 
sonality is  valid  as  against  Kant's  formal  conception  of  rights,  and  his 
tendency  to  conceive  of  freedom  and  duty  also  only  in  relation  to  an  ab- 
stract and  formal  law ;  but  the  ordinary  view,  indicated  in  the  quotations 
given  above,  in  which  rights  follow  duties,  is  true  so  far  as  a  right  always 
implies  an  antecedent  obligation,  moral  or  legal.  Thus  my  duty  is  pre- 
sented first  to  me  in  the  maxim  which  Mr,  Mulford  gives  as  the  funda- 
mental law  of  rights:  "Be  a  person,  and  respect  others  as  persons." 
Becoming  conscious  of  my  obligation  so  to  do,  I  gain  further  conception 
of  my  rights  as  a  person,  and  the  rights  of  other  persons  in  respect  to  me. 
Yet  Mr.  Mulford' s  argument  is  profoundly  true,  that  the  real  derivation 
both  of  duties  and  rights  is  from  the  nature  of  man  as  a  personal  being 
existing  in  a  moral  order,  and  having  a  moral  vocation,  the  ultimate  ground 
of  which  is  divine. 

Another  theory  of  rights  regards  them  as  equivalents 
of  social  utilities,  or  as  consequences  of  biological  laws. 
But  either  the  ethical  obligation  of  these  laAvs  of  life  is 
suffered  to  slip  in  unobserved  in  the  course  of  the  induc- 
tion of  them  from  nature,  or,  when  it  is  recognized,  it  is 
at  once  exchanged  for  the  conception  that  it  is  reasonable 
to  limit  the  freedom  of  individuals  for  the  sake  of  the 
species.     The  right,  if  not  reduced  ultimately  to  might,  is 


EEALIZATIOX    OF    THE    MORAL   IDEAL  173 

transformed  into  the  reasonable,  which  again  is  turned 
into  the  beneficial,  which  again  is  converted  into  the  moral, 
—  and  the  circle  is  complete.  But  the  troublesome  ques- 
tion remains,  why  ought  the  individual  to  prefer  the  socially 
beneficial  to  his  own  interest?  What  principle  of  right 
secures  all  rights  ? 

The  latest  biological  derivation  of  the  idea  of  rights  is  given  in  ]VIr. 
Spencer's  Justice.  The  abstract  formula  of  justice  is  contained  in  "the 
law  of  equal  freedom."  "Every  man  is  free  to  do  that  which  he  wills, 
provided  he  infringes  not  the  equal  freedom  of  any  other  man."  (p.  46). 
The  sentiment  of  justice,  Mr.  Spencer  compounds  by  mixing  in  his  moral 
chemistry  certain  feelings  and  fears  which  arise  in  the  course  of  the  strug- 
gle of  life,  and  which  may  also  be  traced  on  a  sub-human  plane  in  the 
habits  especially  of  the  gregarious  animals. 

Those  who  hold  the  view  already  expressed  that  right  runs  back  into 
duty,  and  that  all  rights  are  dependent  on  a  supreme  righteousness  which 
is  morally  discerned,  need  have  no  dispute  with  the  inductions  from  which 
Mr.  Spencer  generalizes  the  formula  of  justice,  so  far  as  these  can  pos- 
sibly be  made  to  go.  For  inductions  from  the  struggle  of  life  up  into 
some  moral  order,  only  serve  to  show  that  the  universe  is  constituted  to 
attain  its  good  in  that  moral  order  and  under  its  ethical  idea  ;  ]\lr.  Spen- 
cer's deductions,  also,  from  the  biological  laws  of  life,  by  which  the  neces- 
sity of  the  maintenance  of  human  rights  under  the  law  of  equal  freedom, 
is  proved,  confirm  the  validity  of  that  moral  order  whose  ethical  quality  is 
the  reflection  of  an  eternal  righteousness.  Mr.  Spencer  compares  with 
his  own  formula  for  justice  the  determination  of  the  idea  of  right  by  Kant 
which  he  states  had  only  recently  become  known  to  him.  Kant  derived 
the  idea  of  right  from  the  law  of  freedom :  ' '  The  right  is  the  comprehen- 
sion of  the  conditions  under  which  the  choice  of  one  can  be  united  with 
the  choice  of  another  under  a  general  law  of  freedom  "  {Metaplvjsilc  der 
Sitten^  s.  30).  In  this  definition  Kant  not  only  proceeded,  as  Mr.  Spencer 
recognizes,  from  the  metaphysical  side,  but  also  he  left  behind  him  any 
merely  naturalistic  derivation  of  ethics  from  unethical  appetencies  and 
feelings.  The  difference  between  Kant's  philosophy  of  right  and  Spencer's 
biology  of  it,  is  wide  as  the  difference  between  a  reverence  for  the  author- 
ity of  moral  law,  and  a  comfortable  sense  of  life  amid  favorable  conditions. 
The  latter  is  not  contradictory  of  the  former,  but  rather  may  be  confirma- 
tory of  it ;  but  the  former  is  superior  to  the  latter  and  not  to  be  identified 
with  it.  Mr.  Spencer  might  also  have  found  his  law  of  justice  stated  in 
"the  maxim  of  co-existence,"  as  Stahl  has  summarized  it  {opus  cit.  ii. 
s.  243). 

The  consideration  of  particular  rights  may  be  conven- 
iently postponed  to  the  chapter  on  duties ;  but  the  rise  of 
the  idea  of  rights,  correlate  to  duties,^  is  here  to  be  noticed 

1  Strictly  speaking,  it  is  more  accurate  to  say  that  obligations  and  rights 
are  correlative,  for  the  conception  of  obligations  implies  a  relation  of  persons; 


174  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

as  one  mark  of  the  stage  of  moral  development  under  the 
law,  which  we  now  are  reviewing. 

(3)  Another  characteristic  of  the  moral  consciousness 
in  its  legal  epoch  is  the  sense  of  sin  as  something  morally 
imputable  to  the  individual,  —  the  consciousness  of  sin  as 
guilt.  A  sense  of  personal  responsibility  under  the  com- 
mandment, and  conviction  of  sin  under  the  law,  are  clearly 
marked  facts  in  moral  experience ;  they  are  typical  facts 
of  man's  moral  consciousness,  —  the  moral  type,  that  is, 
which  we  find  developed  in  man's  conscience  has  among 
others  these  distinctive  signs  and  characteristics.  To 
ignore  them,  or  not  to  give  them  due  place  in  our  moral 
classification,  would  be  as  unscientific  as  it  would  be  for 
the  biologist  to  leave  out  some  bone,  or  other  distinguish- 
ing mark  of  typical  forms,  in  his  classification  of  tlie  differ- 
ent species  of  animals.  Yet  it  would  be  hard  to  find  in 
the  writings  of  moral  philosophers  of  the  modern  and  evo- 
lutionary school  any  adequate  determination,  or  discussion 
even,  of  the  place  which  the  fifty-first  j^salm  or  the  seventh 
chapter  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  may  properly  hold  in 
the  moral  classification  of  human  nature. 

In  the  earlier  Hebrew  conception  sin  was  regarded  as  a  failure  to  keep 
some  requirement,  and  consequently  as  an  exposure  to  punishment : 
forensic  liability  before  Israel's  God  rather  than  moral  guilt  marked  the 
earlier  sense  of  sin.  Still  sin  was  regarded  as  against  Jehovah  ;  and  as  the 
knowledge  of  his  holy  will  increased,  the  sense  of  sin  as  moral  wrong 
deepened.  Moreover,  as  Jehovah  was  believed  to  be  the  judge  of  men,  to 
whom  all  might  look  for  vindication,  sins  against  men  took  on  a  deeper 
religious  significance,  and  were  condemned  by  the  prophets  as  unrighteous- 
ness before  God.  The  sins  of  the  people  which  the  prophets  spare  not, 
were  not  legal  omissions,  but  social  iniquities.  Even  in  the  school  of 
Judaic  legalism  in  which  St,  Paul  was  educated,  to  his  earnest  moral 
nature  the  law  was  holy,  just,  and  good  as  the  will  of  God,  and  it  con- 
demned him  with  a  hopeless  condemnation. 

Christian  ethics  recognizes  in  the  personal  sense  of  sin 
under  the  law  one  of  the  landmarks  of  moral  history. 
"  But  when  the  commandment  came,  sin  revived,  and  I 
died":   whenever  in  the  history  of  Israel  as  a  people,  or 

duty  implies  a  relation  between  the  moral  subject  and  a  law.    So  Rothe,  Theol. 
Eth.  §  853. 


PtEALIZATIOX   OF   THE   MOEAL    IDEAL  175 

of  Paul  as  an  individual,  that  took  place,  a  moral  epoch 
was  reached.  The  legal  era  in  its  beginning,  in  its  char- 
acter, and  in  its  consequences  was  marked  by  these  inde- 
structible moral  signs  ;  ''the  commandment  came,"  —  man 
knew  himself  to  be  under  moral  sovereignty :  "  sin  revived," 

—  man  became  conscious  of  his  sin  as  sin:   "and  I  died," 

—  the  sense  of  guilt  was  a  human  hopelessness  and  despair 
to  be  likened  only  to  the  physical  evil  of  death. 

(4)  In  the  moral  development  through  the  legal  stage 
there  may  be  traced  also  a  corresponding  growth  in  the 
moral  conception  of  God. 

The  idea  of  God  is  not  brought  to  man's  conscience 
wholly  from  without ;  it  is  the  truth  of  God  which  is 
implicit  in  the  moral  life  of  man.  It  is  not  so  much  an 
inference  from  conscience  as  a  revelation  through  con- 
science. Accordingly,  as  the  moral  history  deepens  and 
enlarges,  the  revelation  of  God  through  our  moral  experi- 
ence may  be  expected  to  grow  clearer  and  richer.  It  was 
so  in  the  history  of  Israel.  The  increasing  ethicization  of 
the  idea  of  God  in  Israel  appears  on  the  surface  of  the 
sacred  literature  of  Israel.  It  belongs  to  the  theology  of 
the  Old  Testament  to  trace  this  moral  purification  and 
exaltation  of  the  idea  of  God  under  the  light  of  new 
critical  studies  of  the  sacred  literature.  It  must  suffice 
for  our  present  purpose  to  observe  the  fact  that,  under 
the  schooling  of  the  law,  the  consciousness  grows  and 
deepens  that  the  law  is  to  be  obeyed  not  simply  as  a  com- 
mandment, but  as  itself  the  revelation  of  a  holy  character, 
which  ought  to  reign  because  it  is  altogether  just  and  true. 
The  law  is  seen  to  be  enthroned  in  the  eternal  righteous- 
ness of  God. 

The  following  lines  of  the  moral  development  of  the  idea  of  God  in 
Israel  may  be  noticed.  (1)  Originally  the  people  of  Israel  were  separated 
from  other  nations  not  simply  as  a  people  under  the  rule  of  their  God,  for 
all  peoples  owned  their  national  gods,  but  as  a  people  whose  God  was  him- 
self different  from  other  gods.  It  was  "  a  difference  in  the  personal  char- 
acter of  Jehovah"  that  distinguished  Israel  from  the  surrounding  nations 
(W.  Robertson  Smith,  opns  cit.  p.  70).  (2)  The  experiences  of  the  nation 
served  to  bring  to  revelation  in  the  moral  consciousness  of  the  people,  or  at 
least  of  the  prophets,  the  higher  ethical  elements  which  were  involved  in 


176  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

the  character  of  Jehovah.  The  great  variety  of  names  for  God  and  the  divnie 
attributes,  which  spring  up  in  the  course  of  the  history  of  Israel,  and  by 
w^hich  the  religious  teachers  seek  to  make  Jehovah  known,  indicate  the 
progress  of  the  ethical  conception  of  God  in  Israel.  When  the  prophets 
gain  a  profoundly  ethical  view  of  the  character  of  Jehovah,  they  come  into 
conflict  with  the  popular  theology  ;  for,  according  to  a  lower  conception, 
the  God  of  Israel  could  not  fail  to  protect  and  bless  his  people  ;  but  accord- 
ing to  the  higher  prophetic  knowledge  of  God  as  the  Holy  One,  he  must 
act  in  accordance  with  his  character,  even  though  in  his  righteousness 
he  shall  reject  his  people.  (See  Kuenen,  National  lieUfjions,  p.  124.) 
Further  signs  of  the  increasing  moralization  of  the  thought  of  God  in 
the  legal  period  might  be  found  in  the  less  anthropomorphic  expressions 
of  the  later  priestly  narrative.  (See  Driver,  Int.  to  the  Lit.  of  the  0.  T. 
p.  133.)  Ewald  regards  the  names  of  God  in  the  Old  Testament  as  mark- 
ing successive  epochs  in  the  experience  of  Israel  of  God's  self -revelation 
to  his  people  ;  although  later  criticism  may  lead  us  to  use  v/ith  caution 
these  names  of  God  as  landmarks  of  revelation,  these  words  of  Ewald 
may  still  be  quoted  as  a  true  characterization  of  the  moral  growth  in  the 
knowledge  of  God  under  the  law :  ' '  We  find  .  .  .  through  all  these  two 
thousand  years  an  advancing  purification  (of  speech  concerning  God),  up 
to  the  very  purest  and  most  spiritual,  as  it  appears  approved  in  the  New 
Testament"  {Lehre  der  Bibel  von  Gott,  ii.  s.  105). 

What  the  ethical-religious  conception  of  God  had  be- 
come in  Judaism  in  its  better  form,  before  its  degradation 
in  later  Rabbinism,  we  may  learn  from  the  pre-Chrfetian 
theology  of  St.  Paul.  His  thought  of  God  before  his  con- 
version ma}^  be  gathered  from  the  traces  of  it  which  still 
seem  to  be  left  in  his  Christian  theology,  taken  together 
with  what  may  be  learned  of  the  teachings  in  which  he 
received  his  schooling  under  the  law. 

The  following  charactistics  may  be  thus  marked  in  the 
pre-Christian  theology  which  Paul  may  have  learned  in 
the  school  of  Gamaliel,  (a)  God  was  conceived  as  the 
Sovereignty  above  the  world,  before  whom  man  appears, 
not  with  whom  man  is  to  live.  The  transcendental  ten- 
dency to  put  the  God  of  Israel,  in  exalted  holiness,  far  from 
the  world,  had  become  positive  and  pronounced  in  Juda- 
ism. Religion,  accordingly,  became  a  forensic  procedure 
before  God  rather  than  a  personal  dealing  with  God.^ 
(5)  The  law  is  the  immediate  and  pressing  concern  of 
the  soul.  God  is  laAV  to  the  soul ;  law  is  God  to  man. 
Salvation  is  through  keeping  the  commandments.     Right- 

1  Weber,  oims  cit.  s.  144. 


EEALIZATION   OF   THE   MOEAL   IDEAL  177 

eousness  is  fulfilling  the  law.  In  Paul's  pre-Christian 
theology  the  thought  of  God's  exalted  holiness,  absolute 
sovereignty,  and  unchangeableness  were  the  controlling 
ideas ;  and  religion  was  resolved  into  the  relation  of  the 
soul  to  the  law,  which  is  the  revelation  of  God's  glory  and 
the  unalterable  declaration  of  the  Divine  Will.  Under 
these  overshadowing  ideas  of  Paul's  pre-Christian,  theol- 
ogy, some  gentler  attributes  of  mercy,  love,  and  compassion 
might  have  crept;  but  the  fundamental  elements  of  the 
ethics  of  the  divine  nature  were  comprised  in  the  holy 
law  of  God.  This  ethics  of  the  divine  as  absolute  law, 
as  Paul  had  learned  it,  was  still  a  sublime  conception  of 
Deity.  Moral  Sovereignty,  as  revealed  in  the  glory  of 
unalterable  law,  is  a  grand  and  awful  conception.  Paul's 
moral  theology,  which  he  took  with  him  from  the  schools 
of  Jerusalem  on  the  way  to  Damascus,  was  a  strong  and 
awful  idea  of  righteousness ;  it  was  a  moral  conviction 
not  easy  to  be  explained,  if  conscience  be  after  all  only 
the  refinement  of  some  animal  instinct  or  the  efflorescence 
of  some  social  sentiment.  The  riohteousness  which  a  man 
ought  to  attain,  according  to  Paul's  Judaic  conception  of 
it  (and  still  more  in  his  Christian  knowledge  of  it),  was 
no  generalization  from  utilities.  His  conscience,  in  his 
pre-Christian  period,  had  not  learned  to  walk  peacefully 
with  God,  the  righteous  Father;  but  it  stood  still  and 
trembled,  naked  and  afraid,  before  the  Holy  God  of 
Israel. 

The  pre-Christian  idea  of  God  which  Paul  had  attained, 
and  in  which  his  religious  and  ethical  spirit  had  been 
brought  to  an  arrest  just  before  his  conversion,  has  its 
necessary  time  and  place  in  the  moral  order  of  human  ex- 
perience. It  is  not  a  final  moral  idea  of  God.  It  is  not 
a  thought  of  God,  and  of  man's  relation  to  God,  in  which 
either  the  human  mind  or  the  human  heart  can  rest.  The 
time  for  such  essentially  Calvinistic  conception  of  the  sov- 
ereignty of  Law  as  God  is  just  before  Christ.  Its  place  is 
in  the  synagogue  rather  than  in  the  church.  It  is  a  pre- 
liminary and  pedagogic  conception  of  God  which  leads  up 
towards,  and  is  destined  to  find  fulfilment  in,  the  truth  of 


178  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

God's  holy  Fatherhood,  which  will  remain  after  that  which 
is  in  part  in  human  theologies  shall  have  passed  away.^ 

(5)  In  this  legal  stage  of  moral  development  the  retrib- 
utive forces  of  conscience  are  predominant. 

The  voice  of  conscience  echoes  the  threatening  of  offended 
law.  The  whole  moral  consciousness  is  overshadowed  by  the 
gloom  of  impending  penalty.  Moral  fear  pervades  the  ethi- 
cal life.  This  fear  is  not  simply  nor  solely  a  shrinking  from 
threatened  suffering,  or  an  Adamic  sense  of  loss  of  some 
pleasant  paradise.  Evil  might  gladly  be  welcomed  even, 
and  patiently  endured,  if  only  the  sharper  sting  of  moral 
condemnation  might  be  avoided.  The  distinctive  element 
of  conscience  at  this  stage  is  the  sense  of  moral  retribution, 
and  the  dishonor  of  soul  in  view  of  the  just  incurrence  of 
moral  penalty.  And  in  proportion  as  the  Power  which 
inflicts  penalty  is  seen  to  be  holy,  just,  and  good,  in  that 
proportion  does  the  dread  which  is  involved  in  the  legal 
conscience  become  a  purely  ethical  fear.  It  is  not  so  much 
a  fear  of  loss  of  physical  happiness,  but  an  intense  shrink- 
ing from  the  pain  of  moral  displeasure.  The  happiness 
which  is  desired,  and  which  is  seen  to  have  been  hopelessly 
forfeited  by  disobedience  to  the  law,  is  distinctively  moral 
blessedness.  An  immense  and  apparently  irremediable  dis- 
satisfaction of  the  soul  with  itself  enters  tragically  into 
this  retributive  woe  of  conscience.  Paul's  experience  as 
given  in  the  seventh  chapter  of  Romans  is  the  locus  dassi- 
c'us  of  retributive  conscience  in  this  period  of  self-condem- 
nation under  the  law. 

Such  sense  of  inward  penalty  is  the  goal  of  the  pre- 
Christian  course  of  conscience.  Sin  is  punished  in  the 
consuming  sense  of  inward  dishonor  and  shame.  No 
ethical  theory,  therefore,  can  possibly  prove  adequate 
to  the  full  moral  consciousness  in  its  last  and  highest 
development  under  the  law,  which  does  not  do  justice 
to  this  fact  of  self-retribution  in  conscience.  The  highest 
good,  even  on  this  legal  stage,  must  be   made  inclusive 

1  Upon  the  ethical  necessity  of  the  legal  period  even  without  the  supposi- 
tion of  sin,  the  necessity  of  the  law  in  a  normal  moral  development,  see  Dor- 
ner.  Si/stem  der  Christ.  Sittenlehre,  s.  279. 


REALIZATION   OF   THE   MORAL   IDEAL  179 

of  moral  self-satisfaction  as  well  as  of  any  or  all  possible 
pleasure  in  the  possession  of  the  conditions  of  outward 
well-being.  Eudemonism  must  show  how  inward  justifica- 
tion is  to  be  gained,  as  well  as  secure  the  comfortableness 
of  happy  adaptations  of  the  personal  life  to  its  outward 
conditions,  if  it  is  to  be  true  to  the  ethical  consciousness 
in  its  fullest  and  clearest  legal  development. 

(6)  Another  element  of  the  legal  conscience  which  is 
involved  in  those  already  mentioned,  but  which  deserves 
distinct  notice,  is  the  demand  for  expiation. 

No  phenomenon  of  moral  histor}^  in  antiquity  is  more 
striking  than  this  cry  of  conscience  for  the  expiation  of 
guilt.  The  whole  sacrificial  system  of  the  ancient  world 
proceeds  from  this  moral  demand  of  man's  nature,  and 
rests  upon  it.  How  shall  sin  be  expiated?  The  Greek 
tragedies  enforce  the  law  of  retribution  which  cannot  be 
frustrated,  and  in  them  the  darker  crimes  seem  to  pass  on 
to  their  awful  fate  without  hope  of  expiation.  We  read 
in  the  Greek  poets  sublime  lessons  of  the  inevitableness  of 
justice  and  the  inexorable  certainties  of  retribution.  But 
we  may  find  in  them  only  hints  and  adumbrations  of  a 
gracious  possibility  of  reconciliation  and  hope  of  final  expi- 
ation for  human  guilt.  The  need  is  felt,  the  consciousness 
of  guilt  cries  out  for  atonement ;  but  the  answer  to  this 
prayer  of  the  conscience  must  come,  if  at  all,  as  a  gospel 
from  above. 

In  the  history  of  the  true  religion  in  Israel  the  law  of 
retribution  had  been  wrought  by  judgment  after  judgment 
into  the  moral  fibre  of  the  Hebrew  consciousness;  the 
prophets  taught  that  the  people  whom  God  had  chosen 
could  become  through  their  transgression  a  people  rejected 
of  God.  The  covenant  had  not  been  kept  by  the  nation  ; 
and  the  people  in  their  sins  had  been  visited  with  the 
divine  displeasure.  How  shall  the  Lord  be  made  favor- 
able to  Zion  ?  By  what  suffering  shall  the  sin  of  the  peo- 
ple be  expiated?  Shall  God  restore  Israel  when  it  has 
received  double  for  its  transgression  ?  Or  shall  the  elect 
remnant  be  the  means  of  some  future  divine  salvation  of 
Israel,  and  the  righteous  servant  justify  many?     The  later 


180  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

prophetic  consciousness  was  overshadowed  by  the  awful 
problem  of  possible  moral  justification  for  the  people  whose 
transgression  had  been  visited  with  the  divine  displeasure. 

The  history  presents  a  double  endeavor  to  find  the  an- 
swer to  this  question  of  the  destiny  of  a  sinful  people. 
The  altars  smoked  with  sacrifices,  and  the  prophets 
preached  repentance.  The  religion  of  Israel,  on  its  legal 
side,  sought  for  justification  through  the  development  of 
the  sacrificial  system ;  on  its  more  spiritual  side  it  sought 
for  justification  through  the  prophetic  teaching  of  moral 
purification,  reliance  on  the  divine  mercy,  and  the  promise 
of  the  Messianic  kingdom.  Religion  in  Israel  thus  gained, 
through  the  working  of  one  and  the  same  moral  demand 
for  the  expiation  of  sin,  both  a  priestly  ritual  and  a  pro- 
phetic ethic ;  it  won  a  complete  system  of  outward  sacri- 
fices, and  a  clear  doctrine  of  inward  purification ;  it  came 
down  to  our  Lord's  time  with  an  established  order  of  fasts 
and  offerings,  and  also  a  devout  expectation  of  a  Messiah 
who  should  redeem  his  people. 

4.  The  incompleteness  of  this  legal  stage  of  man's  moral 
history  is  evident  at  a  glance.  Not  all  the  elements  in 
man's  moral  being  have  come  to  full  growth  in  this  period, 
nor  are  the  several  factors  in  his  life  as  yet  reconciled  to 
each  other.  Discord  prevails  within  the  moral  conscious- 
ness. The  moral  forces  in  human  nature  are  at  cross-pur- 
poses, and  no  perfect  work  is  accomplished.  Even  the 
principle  of  obedience,  which  is  the  formative  principle  of 
this  era  of  moral  life  under  the  commandment,  carries  in 
itself  no  evidence  of  moral  finality.  It  is  a  principle  of 
moral  struggle  and  attainment  rather  than  a  principle  of 
moral  possession  and  repose.  Obedience  is  the  way  of  life, 
not  the  end  —  a  walking  in  the  right  way,  not  the  reaching 
the  true  goal  of  life.  Conscience,  reigning  as  law,  is  not 
the  final  and  full  moral  perfection  of  man. 

This  would  hold  true  even  in  a  normal  moral  develop- 
ment unbroken  by  sin.  The  law  is  the  way  to  life,  not 
the  life.  Morality  in  its  highest  conceivable  perfection  is 
right  relationship  of  personal  life.  It  cannot  be  realized, 
therefore,  merely   through   a   subjection   of   the    will   to 


BEALIZATION   OF   THE   MOKAL   IDEAL  181 

authority;  the  perfect  life  is  to  be  found  only  in  the  free 
communion  of  persons  who  realize  together  the  moral 
good.  Hence  conscience,  as  a  law  of  right  commanding 
in  the  fear  of  punishment,  is  not  the  highest  conceivable 
moral  attainment ;  —  '^  Perfect  love  casteth  out  fear."  ^ 

If  it  be  true  that  even  in  a  normally  conceived  moral 
development,  unbroken  by  the  entrance  of  sin,  the  legal 
stage  is  but  a  half-way  house  on  the  path  to  man's  final 
moral  destination,  still  more  obvious  is  it  that,  after  sin 
has  entered,  man  cannot  stop  and  live  forever  in  this 
arrested  and  incomplete  state  of  conscientiousness.  Con- 
science, as  law  without  promise,  becomes  a  law  of  death. 
Conscientiousness,  as  the  ruling  principle  of  life,  reaches 
forward  to  a  certain  strength  and  firmness  of  virtuous 
principle,  and  then  stops ;  it  has  no  power  to  carry  the 
moral  character  further  or  higher ;  it  will  leave  the  virtue 
loveless  and  without  sweetness,  unless  some  other  and 
more  gracious  principle  of  life  appears  to  lift  it  to  a 
better  development.  Persons  who  are  simply  and  solely 
conscientious  men,  are  arrested  moral  growths.  They 
stand  often  along  the  Avays  of  life  like  strong  and  sturdy 
trunks  of  trees  in  winter,  without  leafiness  or  fragrance, 
without  sap  flowing  from  their  roots  or  fruit  on  their 
branches.  They  need  a  summer's  sunshine  and  quicken- 
ing. The  moral  life  cannot  remain  in  its  legal  elements, 
and  3^et  grow  to  its  perfection  from  the  single  principle  of 
obedience.  The  servant  is  not  the  friend.  Still  less  is  the 
servant  who  has  been  found  wanting  and  put  under  disci- 
pline or  on  probation,  as  the  son  w^ho  has  the  freedom  of 
the  house.  All  moral  systems,  therefore,  which  begin 
and  end  Avith  law  and  its  moral  principle  of  obedience,  are 
insufficient,  and  correspond  only  to  a  temporary  or  inter- 
mediate state  of  moral  development,  —  a  state  Avhich 
would  be  one  of  hopeless  arrest  and  final  paralysis,  were 
there  no  escape  from  it  after  sin  has  once  made  it  a  state  of 
condemnation.  Such  systems  of  the  laAv  contain  no  poAver, 
and  open  no  prospects,  for  the  realization  of  the  moral  ideal, 
and  the  existence,  some  happy  day,  on  earth  as  in  heaven, 

1 1  John  iv.  18. 


182  CHKISTIAN   ETHICS 

of  the  perfect  moral  communion  and  life.  Kant's  etliic  of 
the  categorical  imperative  belongs  to  this  legal  and  pass- 
ing stage  of  ethical  progress  ;  grand  as  it  is  in  its  fidelity  to 
the  truth  of  man's  moral  consciousness  under  the  supreme 
imperative  of  duty,  it  has  not  heard  and  rejoiced  in  the 
deeper  and  holier  prophecy  of  the  human  conscience  which 
speaks  of  mercy  and  atonement,  and  from  which  proceeded, 
through  all  the  ages  of  the  law,  the  ethical  hope  of  the 
Messiah  and  his  kingdom  of  moral  redemption. 

III.     THE    CHPaSTIAN    ERA    OF    MORAL    DEVELOPMENT 

The  changed  moral  environment  of. man's  spirit,  as  well 
as  the  beginning  of  modern  history,  dates  from  the  birth  of 
Jesus  Christ. 

This  new  dispensation  may  be  divided  into  two  eras, 
the  one  dating  from  the  birth  of  Christ,  and  ending  with 
his  finished  personal  work  in  the  ascension  ;  and  the  other 
beginning  with  Pentecost,  continuing  through  this  latter 
age  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  destined  to  come  to  its  period 
in  the  second  coming  of  Christ.  The  central  and  illumi- 
native truth  of  this  whole  dispensation  is  the  Incarnation. 

The  doctrine  of  the  incarnation  —  its  nature  so  far  as  it 
may  be  rationally  apprehended  —  its  method,  so  far  as  suc- 
cessive degrees,  or  stadia  in  a  process  of  divine  incarnation 
in  the  birth  and  through  the  life  of  the  man  Jesus  may  be 
distinguished  and  traced  —  and  the  consummation  of  it  in 
the  final  deliverance  of  the  kingdom  of  the  Son  to  the 
Father,  that  God  may  be  all  and  in  all  —  belongs  properly 
to  Christian  dogmatics,  and  does  not  fall  immediately  within 
the  province  of  Christian  ethics.  Nevertheless,  our  ethics 
must  take  from  theology  the  Christian  pre-suppositions  of 
the  moral  consciousness  as  it  is  found,  developed  or  pro- 
phetic, in  the  existing  Christian  world.  Moreover,  theol- 
ogy finds  its  truth  of  God  in  Christ  most  clearly  revealed, 
and  more  easily  apprehensible  along  ethical  lines  and  in 
the  moral  contents  of  its  knowledge  of  God.^ 

1  The  Trinity  is  ethically  rather  than  metaphysically  revealed  in  Christ's 
words  concerning  the  love  of  the  Father  and  tlie  Son  in  John's  Gospel ;  yet  the 
ethical  unity  must  have  its  metaphysical  ground. 


REALIZATION   OF   THE   MORAL   IDEAL  183 

Hence,  keeping  closely  to  the  ethical  significance  of  this 
first  truth  of  Christian  theology,  we  have  to  contemplate 
it,  so  far  as  it  can  be  morally  known,  and  to  interpret  it  in 
its  special  relations  to  the  growth  of  the  moral  conscious- 
ness of  man.  Since  the  presence  of  Christ  has  changed 
the  moral  environment  of  conscience,  and  put  man's  spirit 
into  a  new  ethical  relation  to  God  ;  since  it  has  lifted  con- 
science to  a  higher  sphere  and  set  it  free  in  a  life-giving 
atmosphere  ;  the  incarnation  has  become  an  ethical  truth 
of  supreme  significance  in  the  moral  history  of  the  world.^ 

1.  The  Word  was  the  moral  promise  and  potency  of 
pre-Christian  history. 

In  one  of  the  most  forceful  and  remarkable  of  St.  Paul's 
arguments  with  the  Jews  he  held  that  before  the  giving  of 
the  law  was  the  promise,  and  that  the  promise  Avhich  Avas 
before  the  law,  and  independent  of  the  law,  could  not  pos- 
sibly have  been  superseded  by  the  entrance  of  the  law.^ 
The  law  intervenes,  does  its  work,  and  leads  up  to  the 
promise  in  its  Christian  fulfilment.  In  Paul's  Christian 
theology  he  recognized  as  an  historic  fact  of  grace  that 
there  was  a  Christian  promise  of  God  before  the  law, 
which,  continuing  unabrogated  by  the  law,  came  to  fulfil- 
ment in  the  passing  away  of  the  law. 

This  Pauline  view  of  pre-Christian  promise  and  grace 
is  in  accordance  with  all  our  knowledge  of  the  moral  and 
spiritual  powers  which  were  working  in  the  world  before 
tlie  manifest  appearing  of  Christ.  There  was  from  the  be- 
ginning a  potentiality  for  the  Christ  in  the  nature  of  man. 
There  was  a  latency  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ  in  the  teach- 
ings of  Isaiah  and  the  prophets.  The  Word,  as  the  early 
Christian  apologist  maintained,  was  in  the  world  before 
he  was  in  Christ.^  The  fathers  did  not  err  when  they  dis- 
covered in  the  higher  moral  expressions  of  heathendom  the 
seeds  of  the  Word  which  was  made  flesh.  The  continuity 
of  man's  moral  development  on  the  divine  side  of  it  re- 

1  We  do  not  give  below  the  dogmatic  definitions  of  the  faith  of  the  church 
in  the  incarnation.  For  these,  among  recent  books,  see  Gore,  The  Incarna- 
tion of  the  Son  of  God. 

2  Gal.  iii. ;   Rom.  iv. 

3  Justin  Martyr,  A2)ol.  i.  46;  11.  13. 


184  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

quires  and  justifies  this  view  of  the  pre-Christian  working  of 
the  Logos.  For  the  continuity  of  nature  and  of  the  history 
of  man  is  both  supernatural  and  natural,  —  an  unbroken- 
ness  of  life  and  power  both  on  the  earthly  and  the  heav- 
enly, the  human  and  the  divine  side  of  its  unfolding.  Two 
threads  are  woven  together  throughout  from  the  beginning 
of  creation  to  the  end,  —  the  one  is  the  divine  causation, 
and  the  other  is  the  law  of  evolution  :  conceive  the  con- 
tinuity to  be  broken  in  either  cord,  on  the  supernatural 
or  the  natural  side,  the  gracious  or  the  human,  and  the 
whole  process  of  the  creation  and  its  history  becomes 
confused,  the  ascent  of  life  is  rendered  unintelligible,  and 
everything,  above  and  below,  grows  confused,  meaningless, 
discordant.  The  unity  of  life  and  history,  for  which  all 
science  seeks,  lies  in  tlie  continuity  of  the  divine  as  well 
as  the  earthly.  Hence  we  must  suppose  tliat  the  life  and 
the  Spirit  of  tlie  Clirist  had  their  pre-Christian  presence 
and  potentiality,  —  as  the  sun,  which  fills  our  day  with 
light,  had  its  pre-solar  latency  and  promise  in  the  lumi- 
nousness  of  the  nebula  before  ever  the  worlds  were  formed. 

This  general  truth  of  the  ethical  indwelling  of  the 
Christ  in  humanity  before  the  Word  was  made  flesh,  which 
was  early  recognized  by  some  of  the  Church  fathers,  has 
been  more  definitely  conceived  and  more  powerfully  appre- 
hended by  many  modern  thinkers.  It  is  a  familiar  concep- 
tion in  German  theology,  and  it  has  had  much  to  do  with 
the  most  fruitful  theoloo^ical  thinking^  in  Eno^land  of  late 
years. 

2.  We  meet  in  modern  theology  the  frequent  assertions 
that  Clirist  exists  as  the  root  of  our  humanity ;  ^  that  there 
is  an  essential  indwelling  of  Christ  in  humanity ;  that  the 
Christ  in  some  vital  sense  is  in  every  man.  When  ana- 
lyzed and  thought  out,  especially  on  the  ethical  side,  these 
assertions  will  be  seen  to  involve  these  more  specific  ideas : 
(1)  There  is  in  human  nature  a  capacity  for  the  Christ,  or 
a  capacity  for  some  divine  incarnation.  The  creation  in 
the  divine  thought  of  it  never  was  a  Christless  creation. 
In  the  same  divine  thought  in  which  from  eternity  the 

1  Rev.  xxii.  16. 


REALIZATION    OF   THE   MOEAL    IDEAL  185 

world  exists,  Christ  is  also  thought  of  as  the  fulfilment  of 
it,  and  as  the  complete  realization  of  the  divine  wisdom 
and  love  which  goes  out  in  creation.  The  divine  idea  of 
creation  from  eternity  is  the  idea  of  a  creation  for  Christ,  and 
to  be  fulfilled  in  Christ.^  Any  other  or  inferior  idea  of  crea- 
tion would  be  unworthy  of  God,  and  not  the  best  possible 
idea  of  creation.  A  Christless  creation  —  a  creation  not 
capable  of  the  Christ  —  would  not  be  the  most  perfect  crea- 
tion of  which  God  could  think.  For  it  would  be  a  creation 
without  a  head,  a  broken  work, 'an  incompleted  thought, 
a  word  half-spoken,  a  gift  of  God  not  unto  the  uttermost. 
Therefore,  as  a  moral  work,  expressive  of  the  moral  being 
of  the  perfect  One,  the  creation  is  to  be  regarded  as  made 
for  Christ,  and  as  having  its  fulfilment  in  the  incarnation ; 
God's  idea  of  a  moral  creation  is  finished  not  in  Adam, 
but  in  the  second  man,  who  is  of  heaven.^  Hence  the 
possibility  of  incarnation  in  the  creation  is  to  be  regarded 
as  one  of  the  first  moral  truths  of  its  nature  and  end. 

Corresponding  to  this  a  priori  deduction  of  the  promise 
and  the  capacity  of  the  creation  for  Christ,  is  the  a  posteriori 
induction  to  be  derived  from  the  progressiveness  of  the 
creation  and  the  ascent  of  life  up  through  types  of  increas- 
ing receptivity  for  higher  gifts,  until  the  moral  nature  of 
man  is  attained,  and  his  history  brought  to  its  supreme 
hour  in  the  person  of  the  Son  of  man.  The  observed  ascent 
of  life,  as  it  is  now  recognized  in  our  science  of  the  creation, 
from  the  rudest  material  beginnings  up  through  gradual 
refinements  and  spiritualizations  almost  of  matter  to  the 
intelligent  brain  of  man,  and  his  ethical  capacity  for  be- 
coming a  soul  in  the  divine  image,  —  this  is  throughout  a 
prophetic  promise,  and,  at  the  same  time,  an  increasing 
historic  realization,  of  the  Christ-idea  of  the  creation  from 
eternity.  The  Scripture  expresses  this  relation  to  Christ 
of  the  creative  idea  when  it  speaks  of  the  eternal  pur- 
pose of  God  in  Jesus  Christ.^ 

(2)    This  truth  contains  also  the  implication  that  there 

1  Col.  ii.  15-17.  2  1  Cor.  xv.  47. 

8  This  aspect  of  the  incarnation  the  author  has  treated  more  fully  in  his 
Old  Faiths  in  New  Light,  chs.  v.  and  vi. 


186  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

is  a  kinship  in  Christ,  or  natural  unity  witli  Christ,  in 
every  man.  This  Christ-kinship  is  part  of  man's  God- 
likeness.  Every  man  may  be  said  to  be  naturally  a  Chris- 
tian so  far  as  in  his  nature  there  exists  a  capacity  to 
become  Christlike.  Every  man  has  something  in  him 
by  nature  which  relates  him  to  Christ,  which  makes  it 
possible  for  him  to  become  a  brother  of  the  Lord.  For 
Christ  in  his  God-filled  humanity  brings  to  perfect  fruition 
powers  of  being,  capacities  of  nature,  signs  and  prophecies 
of  God's  intention  in  man,  which  belong  to  our  common 
human  nature,  and  in  which  we  individually  all  have  part 
and  share  by  our  birthright  in  our  Father's  home  as  chil- 
dren of  God.  The  Christ  is  the  perfect  and  eternal  son- 
ship  of  humanity  from  God,  in  virtue  of  which  we  all  are 
brethren. 

This  capacity  for  Christ,  however,  which  belongs  to 
man's  original  nature,  and  which  is  involved  in  the  divine 
idea  from  eternity  of  a  moral  creation,  is  not  of  itself  the 
actuality  of  it,  not  the  realization  of  the  Christ  among  men. 
Neither  is  the  Christ  when  he  comes  merely  the  product 
of  the  human  nature  which  is  made  for  Christ.  The  capac- 
ity in  man  for  Christ  is  a  receptive  principle,  not  a  pro- 
ductive power.  Humanity  can  receive,  but  it  cannot  make 
its  own  Christ.  Both  the  original  human  receptivity  and 
the  final  realization  of  the  orio^inal  Christ-idea  of  man 
proceed  alike  from  God.  The  Christ  comes  naturally,  in 
accordance,  that  is,  with  the  natural  preparation  of  man's 
constitution  for  him ;  yet  supernaturally  also,  in  accord- 
ance, that  is,  with  the  self-imparting  power  of  God.  The 
Christ  is  thus  both  the  completion  of  humanit}^  and  the 
highest  impartation  of  the  divine  love.  He  is  the  incar- 
nation of  God  in  humanity  according  to  the  capacity  of 
human  nature,  in  God's  eternal  idea  of  it,  to  receive  the 
image  of  God.  The  whole  divine  idea  of  humanity  as  the 
Son  of  God's  love,  which  idea  exists  potentially  and  as 
capacity  to  receive  God  in  all  men,  is  brought  to  its  divine 
fulfilment,  and  is  realized  once  for  all  in  the  second  man, 
the  Lord  from  heaven. 

3.   We  may  further  view  the  incarnation  as  the  realiza- 


EEALIZATION   OF   THE   MORAL  IDEAL  187 

tion  in  space  and  time  of  God's  eternal  humanness.  If  our 
nature  is  in  God's  image,  then  there  exists  likewise  in  God 
himself  something  eternally  corresponding  to,  and  origi- 
native of,  the  human  nature.  There  must  be  an  eternal 
human  archetype  in  God's  own  nature.  We  may  speak, 
therefore,  reverently  yet  truly  of  the  eternal  humanness  of 
God.  He  is  the  Father  of  spirits ;  and  as  the  son  has  the 
image  of  the  father,  so  likewise  the  Divine  Father  may  find 
His  nature  in  His  children.  This  essential  and  eternal 
humanness  of  God  is  realized  under  temporal  conditions, 
as  in  no  other  way  so  completely,  in  the  person  of  the  Son 
of  his  love.  The  person  of  Christ  is  the  objectifying  of 
the  eternal  Christ-side  (the  humanness)  of  God's  nature. 
This  is  more  than  a  manifestation  of  it ;  it  is  a  realization 
of  it  in  time  and  space.  God  in  the  historical  Christ  is 
God  objectified,  making  himself  an  object  of  apprehension 
and  communion  within  the  limitations  of  time  and  space. 
That  which  in  the  Godhead  is  His  interior  glory,  beyond 
all  time,  and  uncommunicated,  becomes  through  the  incar- 
nation and  in  Christ  the  communicated,  manifested  glory 
of  God  —  His  impartation  of  Himself,  through  the  eternal 
Word,  for  finite  communion,  under  finite  conditions,  and 
in  a  form  apprehensible  by  men.  God  in  Christ  is  God 
making  himself  the  definite,  historical  object  of  human 
knowledge,  approach,  and  communion.^ 

4.  The  ethical  significance  of  the  incarnation,  as  thus 
apprehended  in  our  theology,  remains  now  to  be  made 
apparent. 

(1)  It  enables  God  on  His  part  to  be  more  to  the  moral 
creation.  God  in  Christ  is  more  to  us  than  God  before 
Christ,  or  without  Christ,  could  be.  The  divine  environ- 
ment of  man's  spirit  becomes  through  Christ  a  closer  and 
more  luminous  communion  of  God  with  man.  The  incar- 
nation consequently  has  worth  to  God  himself  as  it  enables 
Him  to  be  more  to  His  moral  creation.  To  a  man  born  in 
Adam's  day  God  existed  as  the  Creator  or  infinite  Father ; 
to  a  man  born  in  Isaiah's  day  God  was  all  that  God  in  the 
history  of  creation  and  revelation  up  to  that  time  could 

1  See  Gore,  The  Incarnation,  p.  175. 


188  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

be.  To  neither  had  the  Lord  become  historically  all  that 
God  can  be  to  man ;  for  the  ways  of  access  and  contact 
between  God  and  man  had  not  all  been  opened,  and  there 
was  much  in  the  Godhead  which  human  nature  is  made 
capable  of  receiving,  which  had  not  then  been  historically 
bi'ought  nigh,  and  which  yet  waited  to  be  revealed.  To 
a  man  living  now  God  may  be  all  that  God  in  history  has 
become  through  the  presence  of  Christ  and  in  the  power 
of  his  Spirit.  In  the  ascended  Christ,  through  the  Logos 
who  has  been  made  flesh,  and  who  ever  lives  at  the  right 
hand  of  the  Majesty  on  high,  God  has  imparted  Himself 
to  the  whole  moral  universe  in  the  fulness  of  His  love  and 
with  an  absolute  communication  of  Himself,  beyond  which 
we  can  conceive  of  no  higher  kind  of  revelation.  It  is 
God's  most  personal  revelation  of  Himself;  and  greater 
love  than  to  give  his  own  life,  hath  no  man.  Consequently 
in  the  ascended  and  glorified  Lord,  God  is  and  shall  be  in 
the  agfes  of  aofes  more  to  men  than  God  was,  or  could  have 
been,  without  Christ. 

(2)  This  mode  of  thinking  discovers  a  cosmical  moral 
significance  in  the  incarnation.  God  realizing  in  any 
world  his  eternal  humanness  in  Christ,  is  God  thereby 
existing  in  fuller  self-impartation  and  in  more  intimate 
communion  with  all  finite  moral  beings.  The  difficulties 
in  this  conception,  like  all  the  difficulties  in  our  idea  of 
God,  are  more  metaphysical  than  ethical.  Leaving  for 
the  moment  out  of  mind  any  endeavor  to  construe  the 
metaphysics  of  God's  self-impartation  under  finite  con- 
ditions, and  looking  solely  at  the  ethical  side  of  it,  we 
shall  not  find  it  impossible  to  conceive  that  Love  will  give 
of  itself  to  the  utmost;  that  the  eternal  Love,  which  is 
God,  will  not  be  self-satisfied  until  it  has  communicated 
itself  through  the  utmost  possible  realization  of  itself  in 
the  same  creation  which  proceeds  from  its  own  infinite 
heart.  Thus  the  incarnation,  ethically  conceived,  becomes 
the  last  word  of  creative  Love.  There  can  be  no  end  of 
Love's  creative  speech  until  that  last  word  is  spoken. 

(3)  We  receive,  consequently,  through  the  incarnation, 
an  enhanced  ethical  environment  of  life.     Man  is  put  upon 


REALIZATION    OF    TRE   MOKAL   IDEAL  189 

a  new  and  higher  phme  of  ethical  motive  and  aspiration 
in  God's  Christian  era  of  the  creation.  The  power  of 
the  Holy  Ghost  is  greater  insistence  of  God  in  men's  lives 
than  was  possible  under  the  previous  conditions  of  reve- 
lation. Historical  Christianity,  on  the  ethical  side  of  it,  is 
increased  divine  motive-power  for  men.  Those  who  are 
born  in  this  era  of  grace,  those  who  are  brought  within  the 
knowledge  of  historical  Christianity,  are  born  on  a  higher 
plane  of  revelation,  are  subjected  to  an  approach  of  divine 
influence  more  intimate  and  more  efficient  than  was  per- 
mitted to  men  who  lived  under  previous  dispensations. 
Hence  to  the  moral  life  of  man  in  the  presence  of  Chris- 
tianity are  brought  new  inspirations  ;  humanity  is  touched 
by  the  divinest  motives.  We  shall  have  occasion  to 
observe  the  enhanced  motivation  of  human  life  under  this 
latter  realization  of  God  in  humanity  through  Christ,  as 
we  shall  pass  to  the  consideration  of  the  Christian  virtues 
and  duties.  A  single  illustration  at  this  point  of  the  higher 
ethical  power  of  human  life  under  the  gospel,  may  be  drawn 
from  the  deepened  conception  of  sin  which  accompanies  the 
knowledge  of  Christ  among  men. 

The  Christian  sense  of  sin  brings  out  elements  of  it, 
which  were  latent  in  the  nature-stage  of  moral  life,  and 
which  were  but  darkly  apprehended  in  the  legal  period. 
Particularly  is  this  true  of  the  sense  of  personal  un worthi- 
ness, and  personal  want  of  fidelity  to  God,  which  we  find 
characterizing  the  Christian  conviction  of  sin.  The  prodi- 
gal comes  to  himself  as  an  ingrate  who  has  left  his  Father's 
house.  Sin,  in  the  Christian  consciousness  of  it,  is  felt 
keenly  and  pathetically  as  personal  wrong  against  a  per- 
sonal love.  It  is  unbelief  in  Christ  who  is  the  express 
image  of  the  Father's  person.  It  is  sin  not  merely  against 
law,  and  exposed  therefore  to  the  penalty  of  law ;  it  is  wrong 
done  against  God,  and  in  its  rejection  of  divine  grace  a 
grieving  the  Holy  Spirit.  That  a  higher  ethical  plane  has 
been  reached  in  the  Christian  sense  of  sin  is  evident  from 
the  typical  instance  of  Peter's  betrayal  of  the  Lord,  and 
his  bitter  self-condemnation.  We  read,  "  And  the  Lord 
turned,  and  looked  upon  Peter."     The  eye  of  Jesus,  fixed 


190  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

on  Peter,  convinced  him  of  his  sin.  "  And  Peter  remem- 
bered, .  .  .  And  he  went  out,  and  wept  bitterly."  ^  Such  is 
the  Christian  consciousness  of  the  personal  treachery  and 
shame  of  sin. 

(4)  This  changed  ethical  relation  of  God  in  His  world 
through  Christ  may  be  more  fully  described  by  the  Scrip- 
tural word,  reconciliation.^  Without  raising  any  theologi- 
cal question  which  this  word  has  suggested,  we  notice  that 
the  world  with  Christ  in  it  had  become  a  new  world  to  the 
apostle  who  had  before  been  bound  to  sin,  under  the  law, 
as  to  a  body  of  death.  He  had  entered  into  a  divine  recon- 
ciliation in  which  old  things  passed  away,  and  all  things 
were  become  new.  It  was  not  merely  a  change  in  his  own 
habit  of  mind,  but  the  world  itself,  since  he  knew  that  God 
was  in  Christ,  reconciling  it  to  himself,  had  become  to  his 
faith  altogether  a  new  and  brighter  world.  His  whole 
moral  atmosphere  was  changed,  and  he  lived  in  another 
element  of  life.  There  was  a  time  when  God  seemed 
almost  his  enemy  ;  or,  if  not  his  enemy,  at  least  a  hard 
Taskmaster,  requiring  duties  he  could  not  perform,  and 
demanding  a  righteousness  in  which  he  could  not  be  made 
perfect.  But  now  old  things  are  passed  away.  God  exists 
as  no  man's  enemy.  His  God  is  his  soul's  eternal  Friend. 
The  world  to  him  is  under  a  changed  sky.  His  life  has 
entered,  as  across  a  bleak  Alpine  pass,  a  sunny  clime ;  all 
things  are  become  new ;  God  is  in  His  world,  holy  still  as 
the  eternal  light,  and  yet  as  the  very  sunshine  and  joy  of 
earth,  the  glow  of  its  beauty  and  the  richness  of  its  vines 
and  fruitfulness.  So  great,  so  morally  great,  was  the 
change  of  the  whole  aspect  of  life  to  St.  Paul  after  he 
knew  God's  reconciliation  in  Christ.  In  the  Christian  age 
the  world  is  known  henceforth  as  the  redeemed  world. 
We  are  born  no  more  under  the  curse  of  sin  only,  and  sub- 
ject to  the  law,  but  also  we  are  born  under  the  promise  and 
to  the  grace  of  God's  redeeming  love  and  presence.  The 
facts  of  life  have  changed,  and  with  them  consequently 
certain  moral  relations  of  human  life.  As  men  belonging 
to  a  humanity  which  is  redeemed  in  Christ,  we  are  no  lon- 

1  Luke  xxii.  61-62.  2  Cor.  v.  18. 


REALIZATION   OF   THE   MORAL   IDEAL  191 

ger  lost,  but  we  are  found.  In  Christ  our  humanity  is  as 
the  sheep  that  was  lost,  but  is  found.  It  is  the  restored 
prodigal,  the  forgiven  child  of  God,  the  servant  called  now 
as  the  son  to  a  new  obedience  and  a  better  service.  As 
individual  men  having  part  in  this  humanity  which  has 
the  Christ  in  it,  we  are  so  far  forth  already  forgiven  sons 
of  God.  Personally,  individually,  we  have  to  make  our  own 
that  confession  of  sin  which  has  been  made  for  man  in  the 
sufferings  and  death  of  Christ;  and  we  are  to  claim  our 
part  also  in  that  divine  forgiveness  which  has  been  received 
for  humanity  by  the  Son  of  man ;  but  inasmuch  as  we  par- 
take in  our  human  nature  of  that  humanity  which  exists 
in  Christ  always  before  God,  we  are  in  a  Christian  relation, 
we  are  under  a  gracious  privilege  which  would  not  exist 
for  us  without  Christ,  and  in  which,  as  men  born  with  sin- 
ful natures  and  to  an  inheritance  of  evil,  we  do  not  stand. 
Since  God's  assumption  of  our  human  nature  in  Christ  the 
distinguishing  moral  feature  of  our  divine  environment  is 
God's  reconciliation  to  us,  —  this  is  the  age  of  grace. 

From  this  review  of  the  nature  of  man's  Christian 
environment,  we  pass  next  to  the  question.  What  is  the 
principle  of  moral  appropriation  in  this  stage  of  develop- 
ment ? 

5.  The  moral  principle  which  corresponds  to  the  third 
era  of  man's  ethical  development  is  denoted  by  the  general 
word,  faith. 

The  further  nature  of  this  principle,  what  it  denotes, 
what  it  comprehends,  may  be  determined  both  a  priori^  and 
a  posteriori ;  both  from  a  study  of  the  nature  of  the  era  to 
which  the  appropriating  principle  of  life  must  correspond, 
and  from  observation  of  the  moral  life  of  men  in  their  actual 
appropriation  of  the  Christian  materials  of  life. 

The  Christian  principle  of  appropriation,  accordingly, 
may  be  determined  first  from  the  nature  of  the  good  to  be 
appropriated  in  the  following  manner  :  — 

(1)  It  is  a  receptive  principle.  There  is  a  new  moral 
condition  to  be  accepted.  We  have  not  to  change  our  own 
moral  surrounding,  to  create  for  ourselves  a  new  and  bet- 
ter atmosphere  for  truer  moral  life.      Divine  grace   has 


192  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

already  created  the  further  moral  conditions  necessary  to 
the  advance  of  moral  life.  The  atmosphere  which  we 
breathe  is  already  Christian.  We  are  not  living  as  in 
some  carboniferous  age,  the  heavy-laden  air  of  which 
could  be  vitalized  only  in  coarse  and  uncouth  forms  of 
vegetation  ;  the  moral  atmosphere  of  these  Christian  days 
is  the  vitalizing,  sunny  power  ui  the  gospel.  We  are  not 
to  seek  for  the  love  of  God  as  something  unrealized  as 
yet ;  we  are  to  keep  ourselves  in  the  love  of  God.^  This 
Christian  exhortation  could  be  freely  given  in  the  latter 
world-age  of  the  Holy  Ghost;  for  it  represents  in  a 
single  word  the  larger  and  higher  Christian  possibility  of 
life.  It  reminds  us  of  the  Christian  truth  that  God  is 
always  around  us  in  his  life-giving  love  ;  that  we  have  but 
to  keep  ourselves  in  it,  and  let  it  renew  and  invigorate  us, 
as  the  clear  air  and  the  sunshine  will  give  health,  and 
color,  and  pulsing  life.  We  have  not  to  create  our  spirit's 
atmosphere  of  life,  but  simply  to  breathe  it.  The  love  of 
God  is  here  and  now,  and  everywhere  around  us ;  keep 
yourselves  in  it. 

(2)  The  principle  of  reception  must  be  like  the  object 
to  be  received.  The  method  of  appropriation  will  be  fitted 
to  the  good  to  be  appropriated.  This  is  a  general  law  of 
receptivity.  The  appropriating  organ  must  have  some 
adaptation,  or  exist  in  some  relation  of  fitness,  to  the  ele- 
ment to  be  taken  up  into  the  life  —  as  the  lungs  are  tissues 
suited  to  the  action  of  the  air,  the  eye  is  a  pure  crystalline 
lense  for  the  light  to  shine  through,  and  the  ear  is  adjusted 
to  the  waves  of  sound.  Analogously,  in  the  moral  world, 
the  principle  by  which  any  ethical  good  is  to  be  made  ours 
must  be  adapted  to  the  grace  which  waits  to  be  taken  up 
into  our  life. 

Now  the  good  to  be  received  in  this  Christian  age  of 
man's  moral  history,  as  we  have  seen  (p.  100),  is  pre- 
eminently a  personal  good.  The  gift  of  God  in  Christ  is 
directly  and  essentially  a  personal  gift.  God  gives  through 
Christ,  not  further  works  of  creation,  not  richer  fruits 
and  fairer    flowers,  not   a  splendid   constellation   in   the 

iJude21. 


REALIZATION    OF   THE   MORAL   IDEAL  193 

skies,  no  new  things  however  rich  or  resplendent ;  God 
gives  Himself — His  personal  favor,  presence,  and  wel- 
come—  His  personal  influence  and  atmosphere  of  life,  light, 
and  grace.  The  moral  advance  in  the  ethical  environ- 
ment has  been  all  along  from  the  less  to  the  more  and 
more  personal  manifestation  and  self-impartation  of  God. 
The  progress  in  the  moral  development  of  history  so  far  as 
it  relates  to  the  external  conditions,  or  the  divine  prepara- 
tion of  the  moral  means  and  motives  for  our  best  ethical 
life,  has  been  from  nature  to  law,  from  law  to  grace, 
from  the  visible  works  and  presence  of  Christ  on  earth  to 
the  perpetual  presence  and  universal  dispensation  of  the 
Holy  Spirit.  This  progress  of  divine  revelation  has  like- 
wise been  a  progress  from  without  inwards ;  from  revela- 
tions more  external  to  communication  of  divine  truth 
more  inward  and  spiritual ;  from  the  divine  transcendence 
to  the  divine  immanence ;  from  the  potential  Christ  —  the 
theophanies  of  the  Old  Testament  —  to  the  historic  Christ, 
and  afterwards  to  the  Spirit  of  Christ  in  the  souls  of 
believers.  We  may  learn  to  live  not  only  in  subjection  to 
the  Father  of  our  spirits,  but  in  the  communion  of  the  Holy 
Ghost.  The  principle  of  moral  receptivity,  therefore,  must 
pass  through  a  corresponding  change ;  and  on  this  Chris- 
tian plane  obedience  will  give  place  to  the  spirit  of  high 
and  reverent  comradeship  with  the  Master ;  the  servant 
will  become  the  friend ;  the  son  in  the  freedom  of  the 
spirit  will  do  the  Father's  will.  Hence  the  Christian  prin* 
ciple  of  appropriating  faith  is  simply  and  thoroughly  a 
principle  of  personal  trust  and  fellowship. 

(3)  This  receptive  principle  of  the  Christian  age — ■ 
faith  —  may  be  still  further  studied  as  the  characteristic 
attitude  of  the  whole  Christian  personality  in  its  relation 
to  the  entire  spiritual  good  which  is  brought  within  its 
reach  in  Christ. 

In  this  personal  receptivity  of  the  Christian  good  the 
following  elements  may  be  discriminated,  (a)  Because 
personal,  it  is  an  active  and  free  reception  of  the  offered 
good.  It  is  not  a  merely  passive  receptivity,  but  an  active 
appropriation  of   divine  grace.     There  is  in  it  a  certain 


194  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

passivity,  indeed,  of  spirit,  —  that  silencing  of  opposing 
desires,  and  quietness  of  soul  which  may  be  described  as 
waiting  upon  God.  But  such  waiting  on  God  implies  a  free 
and  firm  holding  of  one's  soul,  in  a  receptive  attitude,  up 
to  the  light  which  shines  for  us.  Personal  receptivity  of 
mind  or  heart  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  passivity  like 
that  of  a  photographic  plate  which  is  exposed  to  the  light. 
Below  the  line  of  freedom,  beneath  the  power  of  person- 
ality, all  receptivity  of  nature  is  and  must  be  simply  reac- 
tion. Things  receive  without  prior  action ;  having  received 
they  react  according  to  their  natures.  But  reaction  is  not 
exactly  appropriation  —  not  ethical  assimilation.  The  sun- 
shine may  set  free  certain  chemical  energies  in  a  leaf ;  and 
the  energy  of  the  light  will  be  conserved  in  the  motions 
which  its  falling  on  the  combination  of  forces  locked 
together  in  the  leaf  may  have  produced.  The  leaf  is  pas- 
sive until  touched  by  the  sunbeam ;  the  forces  within  the 
leaf  are  held  in  equilibrium  until  the  impact  of  some  other 
force  sets  them  free ;  everything  is  mechanical  and  consec- 
utive ;  there  is  no  free  outgoing  of  energy,  no  meeting  of 
power  from  without  by  the  upspringing  of  power  from 
within.  Nature  below  the  line  of  freedom  is  in  equilibrium 
or  motion,  but  it  manifests  no  spontaneous  and  free  recep- 
tivity. That  is  spiritual,  and  belongs  to  the  spiritual 
order.  Freedom  carries  nature  above  the  dead  line  of  pas- 
sivity. On  the  ascending  scale  of  life  nature  above  the 
line  of  freedom  becomes  capable  of  active  receptivity,  that 
is,  of  moral  appropriation.  Will,  entering  into  nature, 
holds  man  up  as  a  self-moved  reagent  among  the  forces 
that  play  upon  him.  Influences  from  all  quarters  Avill 
gather  around  the  moral  agent.  They  may  enter  at  times 
unawares  into  the  life  of  man,  and  seem  to  remain  long  as 
latent  materials  to  be  afterwards  developed  in  the  conscious 
determinations  of  character.  The  mental  receptivity  of 
the  child  appears  at  first  to  be  a  mere  gathering  of  outward 
impressions,  only  minor  degrees  of  personal  activity  being 
noticeable  in  momentary  attention  or  the  beginnings  of 
reflection.  But  outward  influences  never  enter  vitally  and 
become  essential  part  of  the  personal  character,  until  they 


IIEALIZATIOX    OF   THE   MORAL   IDEAL  195 

have  been  actively  received,  and  freely  assimilated  through 
the  Avilling  mind.  Character  is  the  fixed,  yet  advancing 
line  which  is  drawn  by  free  will  across  the  wild  land  or 
debatable  ground  of  nature.  It  marks  what  has  been 
made  one's  personal  property,  and  each  man  has  to  possess 
himself  of  his  character.  By  no  exercise  of  power  can  God 
Himself  make  any  man  good,  as  the  air  can  be  rendered 
healthful  by  the  force  of  the  winds  blowing  through  it. 
God  can  make  no  human  heart  pure  as  he  can  make  the 
sky  clear,  simply  by  pouring  a  morning's  sunshine  into  it. 
The  door  must  be  opened  from  within  to  the  Spirit ;  the 
heart  must  turn  itself  to  the  light  which  waits  to  shine 
into  it.  Human  freedom  is  a  capacity  of  moral  receptivity 
which  God  has  set  as  a  limit  to  his  own  almightiness. 

(h}  This  personal  receptivity  is  not  only  a  free  act,  but 
it  must  also  be  a  determination  of  the  whole  personality. 
All  the  personal  powers  must  meet  and  act  together  as  one 
will  in  the  personal  reception  of  divine  grace.  The  whole 
sphere  of  personal  being  is  to  be  held  up  to  the  light  as 
one  lens,  so  that  the  light  from  above  may  be  focused 
upon  it.  The  receptive  Christian  will,  therefore,  is  not 
mere  will,  but  the  will  which  is  expressive  of,  and  which 
carries  with  it,  the  whole  being  in  all  its  experience  of  life. 
It  is  a  rational  will,  and  it  is  also  the  will  of  the  heart.  In 
faith  the  entire  manhood  stands  receptive  before  God.  The 
whole  of  man  is  presented  for  the  action  upon  it  of  the 
Divine  Spirit  in  view  of  the  whole  revelation  of  God. 
Faith  is  man's  entire  nature  put  into  normal  relation,  and 
abiding  in  its  right  position  toward  the  truth  for  which  it 
was  made,  the  knowledge  of  which  is  eternal  life.  Faith 
is  man,  with  all  his  mind  and  heart  and  strength,  saying 
"  Yes,"  to  God  saying,  "  I  am." 

((?)  In  this  receptivity  of  the  whole  being  of  mau  to  God, 
which  is  the  vital  principle  of  the  Christian  life,  it  is  not, 
however,  implied  that  there  is  necessarily  an  entire  absence 
of  contradictory  impulse,  or  refractory  desire.  For  this 
receptive  attitude  is  the  resultant  of  all  the  forces  and 
experiences  of  the  Christian  life  ;  and  in  the  supreme  per- 
sonal choice  other  and  lower  disputant  desires  and  volitions 


196  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

may  be  co-orclinatecl  ol'  suppressed.  Perfect  moral  unanim- 
ity is  the  privilege  of  sinless  beings,  not  the  attainment 
of  characters  now  struggling  up  into  virtue  and  godlikeness. 

(t?)  Neither  is  this  Christian  receptivity  as  yet  perfect 
or  complete  in  its  extension  ;  it  is  still  an  elementary  and 
growing  union  of  the  soul  of  man  with  the  Spirit  of  God. 
Christ  may  be  really,  though  not  fully  formed  within  us. 
The  Spirit  without  measure  was  given  only  to  the  One 
who  always  did  the  Father's  will.  Degrees  and  variations 
in  the  appropriation  of  the  moral  good  may  be  admitted 
w^ithout  denial  or  impairment  of  the  receptive  act  as  an  act 
of  the  person  in  his  moral  wholeness,  or  personal  integrity 
of  being.  It  is  conceivable  that  a  participation  in  the 
highest  good  which  is  perfect  in  kind,  may  be  always 
incomplete  in  its  extension ;  that  an  angel  of  God  may 
receive  more  light  as  he  gains  enhanced  power  of  vision ; 
that  when  the  heart  of  God's  servant  is  enlarged,  he 
may  run  the  way  of  His  commandments.^  The  two  are 
correlate  factors,  —  an  enlarging  heart  and  an  increasing 
revelation.  For  still  stronger  reasons  in  a  sinful  world 
must  it  hold  true  that  the  initial  reception  of  the  true  life 
which  is  light,  may  be  limited  in  extent  and  imperfect  in 
degree.  Now  a  clouded  earth  may  turn  to  the  dawn.  The 
clear  sky,  and  atmosphere  all  flooded  with  light,  may  be 
the  gift  only  of  the  evening-time. 

(e)  This  life  of  faith,  which  we  hold  to  be  the  response  of 
a  man's  whole  being  to  the  Christian  revelation  of  God,  but 
which  may  exist  at  first  in  limited  measures  and  imperfect 
apprehensions,  will  consequently  prove  to  be  an  increasing- 
capacity  of  man  to  receive  the  divine  grace.  Progress  is 
the  sign  of  its  moral  integrity;  growth  is  the  evidence  of 
its  original  vitality.  The  true  life  reaches  forward  towards 
perfection.  It  tends  to  fuller  and  richer  adaptations  of  all 
man's  faculties  and  activities  to  his  spiritual  environment. 
Faith  is  the  continuous  endeavor  of  a  soul  to  live  up  to  the 
possibilities  of  its  divine  environment.  It  is  the  increas- 
ing answer  of  a  life  to  the  Life.  Apart  from  the  growth 
of  the  saints  there  can  be  no  perseverance  of  the  saints. 

1  Ps.  cxix.  32. 


REALIZATIOX   OF   THE   MOEAL   IDEAL  197 

We  have  thus  far  been  describing  the  nature  of  faith,  or 
the  Christian  principle  of  moral  appropriation,  so  far  as  it 
may  be  determined  a  priori  from  the  conditions  of  the  moral 
epoch  of  grace  in  which,  since  the  Incarnation,  man's  spirit 
exists. 

We  have  next  to  determine  further  this  principle — its 
nature,  method,  and  laws  —  a  posteriori ;  to  observe  how 
far  Christian  experience  answers  to  these  general  a  jjriori 
forms  of  it ;  and  to  fill  these  up  with  more  definite  Christian 
contents. 

The  principle  of  Christian  appropriation  (moral  personal 
receptivity)  may  be  determined,  secondly,  as  follows  from 
Christian  experience. 

(1)  According  to  the  gospels  the  relation  of  the  first 
disciples  to  Jesus  seems  to  have  been  one  of  simple  personal 
trust.  They  followed  him.  They  recognized  in  him  the 
Master,  and  they  had  confidence  in  him.  They  did  not  at 
first  understand  many  of  his  sayings,  they  did  not  know 
what  he  might  do  next,  or  whither  he  would  go ;  but  they 
followed  him  unhesitatingly  because  he  had  commanded 
their  minds  and  won  their  hearts.  Nothing  could  be  sim- 
pler, or  more  complete  than  the  trust  which  the  disciples 
gave  to  the  Master  whose  person  at  once  attracted,  held, 
and  commanded  them.  So  entire  was  their  personal 
devotion  that  even  Thomas  who  could  hardly  believe  in 
the  first  reports  of  the  resurrection  had  said,  when  the 
Master  was  hastening  to  his  hour  of  danger  and  death, 
"  Let  us  also  go,  that  we  may  die  with  him."  i 

(2)  In  the  fourth  gospel  this  primal  principle  of  Chris- 
tian trust  appears  somewhat  expanded  and  enriched.  John 
was  among  the  first  who  trusted  in  Jesus ;  and  then  he 
had  gradually  entered  through  his  personal  sympathy  with 
the  Master  into  deeper  knowledge  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ. 
His  faith  remains  a  simple  personal  trust  in  the  Lord,  but 
it  is  a  trust  which  has  in  it  more  spiritual  discernment. 
St.  John's  faith  is  not  only  confidence  in  Christ,  but  also 
a  dawninof  knowledgj-e  of  the  Son  of  God.  It  is  a  trust 
which  creates  insight,  reaches  unto  knowledge,  possesses 

1  John  xi.  16. 


198  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

light,  and  rests  in  the  truth  of  the  Word  that  was  with 
God.  It  is  a  trust  which  develops  and  clarifies  itself  into 
definite  and  firm  beliefs.  It  is  a  personal  trust  also  which 
ripens  into  love.  The  Lord,  who  has  been  trusted,  is 
loved  with  an  increasing  purity  and  ardor,  and  through 
the  love  his  truth  is  more  and  more  revealed  to  the  faith.^ 
(3)  When  we  trace  the  development  of  this  personal 
principle  of  receptivity  from  the  gospels  into  the  epistles, 
we  are  at  once  struck  with  the  somewhat  changed  and  very 
vigorous  meaning  which  the  Christian  word  faith  assumes 
in  the  experience  and  letters  of  St.  Paul.  It  is  still  indeed 
with  Paul,  as  with  the  first  disciples,  a  personal  trust.  By 
faith  he  is  made  one  with  his  Lord.  But  faith  with  St. 
Paul  is  no  longer  simply  a  receptive  relation  of  the  soul 
towards  Christ;  it  becomes  further  a  justifying  principle 
for  the  believer.  The  truth  is  emphasized  that  in  this 
relation  of  personal  trust  there  is  and  can  be  no  lingering 
element  of  condemnation.  Where  there  is  faith  in  Christ 
there  can  be  no  more  condemnation.  Paul's  moral  experi- 
ence under  the  law  led  him  to  accentuate  this  side  of  the 
relationship  between  the  believer  and  God,  and  to  become 
deeply  conscious  of  the  moral  justification  which  is  gained 
in  the  life  of  faith  in  Christ.  Faith  is  apprehended  in  its 
contrast  with  painful  and  imperfect  and  slavish  obedience, 
even  as  Christ  is  seen  in  his  divine  grace  in  contrast  with 
the  law.  Yet  this  faith,  which  by  virtue  of  its  confidence 
in  Christ  proves  itself  to  be  a  principle  of  justification,  con- 
tains also  germinantly  in  its  trust  the  power  of  a  new  and 
better  obedience.  It  works  by  love.^  It  is  a  faith  which 
first  assumes  that  righteousness  is  already  imputed  to  the 
sinner  for  Christ's  sake,  or  that  God  will  look  with  new 
favor  u]3on  him  as  he  begins  to  live  anew  in  following 
Christ ;  and  then  a  faith  also  which,  on  the  ground  of 
this  first  trustful  assumption  of  free  grace,  makes  actual 
righteousness  possible  in  the  further  working  out  of  the 
moral   character.     In   this   new,  personal  relationship  to 

1  This  is  true  of  the  growth  of  the  faith  of  the  other  disciples,  but  it  is  pre- 
eminently true  of  the  beloved  disciple. 

2  Gal.  V.  6. 


KEALIZATION   OF    THE   MORAL   IDEAL  199 

Christ  the  weight  which  prevented  the  upspringing  of 
true,  free  life  is  removed  from  man's  heart,  and  at  once  the 
power  is  imparted  which  is  able  to  raise  up  the  new,  fruit- 
ful life.  The  stone  once  taken  away,  the  moral  nature, 
responsive  to  the  warmth  of  the  divine  love,  can  break 
through  its  earthly  corruption  and  spring  up  and  grow  to 
strong,  rich  moral  life  and  fruitf ulness. 

(4)  The  other  apostles,  while  still  abiding  in  the  original 
principle  of  the  Christian  life  as  a  personal  trust  in  Christ, 
give  to  that  principle  varying  and  special  expression  accord- 
ing to  their  several  individualities  and  particular  training 
and  calling. 

Thus  St.  James,  who  still  loves  the  temple,  and  lingers 
until  he  dies  in  its  sacred  shadows,  naturally  finds  the 
Christian  principle  of  appropriation  to  be  a  new  law  of  life. 
The  disciple's  relation  to  Christ  as  Master  and  Lord  yields 
for  him  a  new  and  better  law  of  life.  The  legalism  of 
Judaism  is  indeed  overcome  in  the  fundamental  Christian 
principle  of  trust ;  but  in  the  Epistle  of  St.  James  the  legal 
conception  of  life  still  modifies  the  form  and  sets  the  cast 
of  the  new  life  of  Christian  faith.  To  Peter  faith  holds 
in  itself  the  secret  of  justification,  and  also  renews  the 
heart;  but  to  Peter,  who  was  the  first  of  the  disciples 
called  with  John  to  endure  persecution  for  the  Master, 
and  who  suffered  in  his  name,  faith  becomes  especially  a 
source  and  sustaining  power  of  hope.  The  believer's  hope 
is  almost  the  predominant  note  of  Peter's  experience  as 
it  is  disclosed  in  his  epistle. 

These  several  biblical  elements  may  easily  be  combined 
in  a  general  description  of  the  principle  of  moral  recep- 
tivity which  fits  the  new  Christian  environment.  Faith, 
the  peculiar  principle  of  moral  appropriation  in  the  Chris- 
tian dispensation,  is  seen  to  be,  in  its  simple  and  vital  root, 
a  personal  trust.  It  consists  in  receiving  the  influence 
and  power  of  a  person,  even  the  Christ.  But  this  original 
personal  trust  proves  to  be  a  fruitful  moral  relation.  It  is 
new-creative  of  character.  It  reforms  the  conduct  of  life. 
It  opens  the  understanding  to  truth.  It  quickens  the 
spiritual  imagination.     It  lends  earnestness  to  the  reason. 


200  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

It  contains  the  peace  of  justification.  It  brings  the  life 
into  the  freedom  of  the  law  of  the  Spirit.  Faith  in  its 
increasing  power  gives  to  men  spiritual  mastery  over  their 
passions  ;  it  enlightens,  justifies,  makes  righteous  ;  it  opens 
free  course  to  love,  and  possesses  the  cheerful  expectation 
of  the  new  heavens  and  the  new  earth.  In  one  Avord,  the 
Christian  faith  becomes  within  the  soul  the  new  creative 
principle  of  the  Christian  personality. 

6.  The  relation  of  this  Christian  principle  of  faith 
towards  other  elements  and  powers  of  our  nature  remains 
to  be  determined. 

The  psychological  place  and  right  of  Christian  faith  are 
to  be  studied  and  defined,  for  Christian  ethics  should  not 
fail  to  approve  its  fundamental  principles  under  the  tests 
of  modern  psychology.  At  this  point,  therefore,  in  our 
discussion,  philosophical  ethics  have  the  right  to  interpose, 
and  to  demand  that  the  faith-principle  of  Christian  ethics 
justify  itself  at  the  bar  of  psychological  judgment. 

The  philosophical  interpolation  at  this  point  relates  to 
the  four  following  inquiries :  (1)  Is  there  right  or  au- 
thority in  human  nature  for  this  faith-principle  which  is 
acknowledged  to  be  the  formative  principle  of  Christian 
ethics?  (2)  If  so,  what  is  the  standing  and  validity  of 
it  in  relation  to  other  elements  of  psychology  ?  (3)  How 
is  the  principle  of  faith  specially  modified  or  intensified 
in  the  Christian  development  of  it?  (4)  Does  the  Chris- 
tian use  of  this  principle,  and  the  increased  strain  put  upon 
it  in  the  Christian  reliance  on  it,  reveal  any  weakness  or 
flaw  in  the  faith-principle  ? 

The  first  two  of  these  inquiries  belong  primarily  to 
psychology,  and  can  be  considered  briefly  and  summarily 
in  this  volume,  only  so  far  as  it  may  be  necessary  for  us  to 
indicate  still  more  definitely  than  we  have  already  done, 
certain  philosophical  postulates  of  our  ethics.  The  third 
question  is  a  distinctly  ethical  question,  which  should  there- 
fore find  its  proper  place  in  Christian  ethics.  The  fourth 
part  of  this  philosophical  interpolation  we  may  conven- 
iently reserve  until  the  closing  chapter  on  the  moral 
motive  power. 


REALIZATION   OF   THE  MORAL  IDEAL  201 

§  1.     THE    AUTHORITY   OF    THE    PRINCIPLE    OF    FAITH 

We  have  assumed,  as  a  philosophical  postulate  for 
ethics,  the  objectivity  of  knowledge.  With  regard  to  the 
external  material  world  —  the  world  impinging  on  our 
consciousness  through  our  senses  —  we  draw  from  phi- 
losophy the  assumption  of  its  reality  as  something  distinct 
from  and  independent  of  our  thought.  Our  sense-percep- 
tions do  not  mislead  us.  Our  receptivity  to  the  influences 
of  external  nature  is  a  true  receptivity;  we  receive  the 
impressions  of  a  nature  which  in  its  phenomena  is  external 
to  us,  and  is  not  created  by  the  thought  in  which  these 
outward  forms  are  held.  Mind  is  true  mirror  of  nature. 
Something  from  without  is  reflected  within.  Our  funda- 
mental faith  in  the  integrity  of  our  consciousness  at  once 
of  ourselves  and  of  the  world  external  to  ourselves,  is  a 
faith  not  really  to  be  denied,  however  speculatively  it  may 
be  played  with  by  the  philosophers.  It  is  a  faith  funda- 
mental to  all  rational  thought.  Tliis  first  aflirmation  of 
being  in  two  kinds  —  self  and  not  self — is,  as  it  were,  the 
original  and  repeated  sacrament  of  conscious  intelligence, 
and  in  neither  kind  can  the  elements  of  it  be  rightfully 
withdrawn  from  humanity. 

Similarly,  and  for  the  same  reasons,  we  have  assumed 
as  a  philosophical  postulate  the  objectivity  of  the  moral 
truth  of  things.  There  is  moral  reality  corresponding  to 
our  moral  feeling-perception,  as  there  is  physical  actuality 
corresponding  to  our  sense-perception.-  The  final  meta- 
physics is  moral  as  well  as  physical.  The  universe  has 
some  moral  reality  at  its  ultimate  metaphysical  base.  Our 
faith  is  as  valid  in  trusting  the  witness  to  the  moral  reality 
which  lies  at  the  ground  of  all  things,  as  it  is  in  receiving 
the  witness  to  the  existence,  independently  of  our  thought, 
of  the  physical  objectivity  of  the  world.  If  a  subjective 
idealism  is  to  be  rationally  excluded  from  physics,  equally 
is  it  to  be  excluded  from  ethics.  But  if  realism  is  sound 
philosophy,  it  is  also  sound  ethics.  Or,  if  in  regard  to  the 
objectivity  of  the  external  world,  the   last  word  of  phi- 

1  See  above,  p.  145. 


202  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

losopliy  seeks  to  unite  idealism  and  realism,  and  we  are  led 
to  put  confidence  in  a  creation  which  has  objectivity  as  a 
realized  idea  to  the  Eternal  Mind,  and  hence  reality  to  all 
finite  minds  thinking  God's  thought  after  Him ;  equally 
cogent  must  be  our  conclusion  that  an  ideal  realism  holds 
true  also  in  ethics ;  that  the  ideal  good  to  be  chosen  and 
obeyed  by  us  has  in  itself  objectivity  to  the  Eternal  con- 
science which  sees  in  it  the  moral  nature  of  God ;  and 
hence  it  has  immutable  reality  also  to  all  moral  intelli- 
gences who  are  made  in  the  image  of  God,  and  who  reflect 
in  themselves  His  nature  of  righteousness.  True  psy- 
chology yields  both  these  postulates  of  knowledge.  We 
are  not  maintaining  that  there  is  a  special  faculty  for  the 
reception  of  moral  truth,  which  is  to  be  distinguished  from 
other  powers  of  the  mind ;  as  we  need  not  hold  that  there 
is  a  particular  faculty  of  knowing  the  external  world  to  be 
distinguished  from  other  powers  of  the  mind;  we  are 
affirming  that  the  whole  being  of  man,  as  a  rational  and 
spiritual  intelligence,  is  organized  for  knowledge,  —  for 
true,  though  confessedly  partial,  knowledge  of  reality; 
that  alike  towards  the  heavens  and  the  earth,  on  the  side 
of  his  being  which  is  in  contact  with  external  nature,  and 
on  the  side  of  his  being  in  contact  with  eternal  right, 
man  is  organized  for  knowledge  of  the  truth,  and  has  some 
reasonable  and  authoritative  conviction  and  faith. 

We  are  maintaining,  as  our  philosophical  ethics,  that 
the  eternal  Being,  from  whose  continuous  causation  the 
worlds  have  their  phenomenal  existence,  is  also  the  moral 
Being,  —  in  Himself  the  realization  of  the  Good,  —  from 
whose  nature  of  absolute  righteousness  the  moral  laws 
of  the  spiritual  world  perpetually  proceed ;  and  conse- 
quently the  impression  which  man  actually  has  received 
from  the  beginning,  and  which  is  borne  in  upon  him  with 
increasing  insistence  during  the  moral  unfolding  of  his 
life,  that  there  is  a  "  Power  not  ourselves  which  makes 
for  righteousness,"  is  an  impression  of  the  truth,  so  that 
faith  in  it  is  the  first  confidence  and  the  supreme  duty  of 
all  rational  intelligence. 


REALIZATION   OF   THE  MORAL   IDEAL  203 

"  What  is  real,"  Hegel  used  to  say,  "  is  rational,  and  what  is  rational, 
is  real."  Yet  that  famous  dictum  was  but  the  half  of  the  truth  of  the 
universe.  What  is  real  is  also  ethical ;  and  the  ethical  in  the  last  analysis 
of  life  belongs  also  to  the  real  and  the  eternal.  The  reality  of  things,  the 
being  of  God,  is  alike  rational  and  moral.  Metaphysics  in  its  ultimate 
secret  of  being  is  also  ethics.  The  final  ground  of  being  is  moral  as 
well  as  rational.  Can  we  conceive  any  being  as  having  eternal  existence 
unless  at  the  same  time  we  conceive  of  it  as  having  some  moral  be- 
ing ?  Can  anything  endure  forever  without  moral  will  or  character  ? 
Eternal  life  is  in  the  good.  The  evil  is  eternal  death.  What  that  death 
may  be  for  a  spirit  supposed  to  have  sinned  beyond  possibility  of  repent- 
ance, we  do  not  know :  how  speculatively  it  is  to  be  conceived,  is  a 
question  for  dogmatics  beyond  our  present  province.  Were  we  to  pursue 
these  assertions  further  in  the  realm  of  psychology  and  philosophy,  it 
would  be  necessary  to  pass  in  review  successive  forms  of  theories  of 
knowledge  which  have  appeared  since  Kant ;  we  should  be  obliged  also  to 
test  and  to  justify  these  philosophical  assumptions  of  ethical  reality  at  the 
root  of  things  in  the  light  of  recent  researches  into  physiological  psychol- 
ogy. But  the  detailed  argumentation  of  this  philosophical  postulate  of 
our  ethics  would  carry  us  beyond  our  present  limits.  The  further  vin- 
dication of  it  belongs  to  psychology ;  and  the  materials  for  a  new 
psychology,  at  once  simpler  and  more  comprehensive  of  the  physical  condi- 
tions and  the  spiritual  realities  of  experience,  are  being  gathered  and  await 
organization  by  some  competent  hand. 

§  2.     THE    PSYCHOLOGICAL   VALIDITY   OF    FAITH 

The  answer  to  the  second  interposition  has  already 
been  given  implicitly  in  the  statement  just  made  in  reply 
to  the  first  question.  The  faith-principle,  in  its  witness  to 
the  objectivity  of  our  knowledge,  alike  for  our  rational  and 
moral  intelligence,  is  to  be  regarded  as  possessing  validity 
equal  to  that  of  any  other  factors  of  our  self-consciousness. 
If  we  accept  any  testimony  as  credible ;  if  w^e  admit  an}'^ 
psychological  surety  for  logic  ;  we  cannot  invalidate  this 
first  capacity  of  our  intelligence.  This  moral  trust  in 
the  operations  of  our  minds  must  be  accepted  with  a 
child's  confidence,  or  all  our  reasonings  will  fall  apart. 
Without  this  trust  we  cannot  walk  together  along  any  way 
of  reasoning  or  path  of  scientific  investigation.  There  is 
and  can  be,  in  short,  nothing  in  any  of  the  later,  additional 
deliverances  of  our  consciousness  to  invalidate  this  first 
witness  of  mind  to  itself,  to  the  external  world,  and  to 
the  moral  order  which  it  finds  continually  impressed  upon 
itself. 


204  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 


§  3.     THE    DISTINCTIVE    CHRISTIAN    USE    OF    THE    PRINCIPLE 
OF    FAITH 

111  answer  to  the  third  inquiry  we  have  to  consider  how 
far,  or  in  Avhat  manner,  Christian  faith,  which  is  the 
formative  principle  of  Christian  ethics,  is  to  be  distin- 
guished from  faith  in  general.  One  and  the  same  princi- 
ple of  faith,  which  is  fundamental  in  our  being,  may  take 
on  distinctive  characters  in  our  use  and  application  of  it 
to  different  objects  which  are  apprehended  by  it.  Differ- 
ences in  the  nature  of  the  objects  to  be  grasped  by  faith, 
may  determine  differences  either  in  the  mode  of  its  exer- 
cise or  in  the  intensity  of  its  apprehension  of  them.  In 
this  respect  the  faith-principle  may  be  compared  to  a 
general  taste  or  appetency  of  our  nature.  The  eye  may 
seize  more  vividly  some  colors  than  others  ;  the  whole  spec- 
trum of  possible  hues  may  not  yet  find  in  the  human  eye 
an  organ  sufliciently  etherialized  for  their  discrimination. 
The  appetite  of  hunger  may  direct  us  to  those  substances 
which  are  fitted  to  serve  as  food  for  the  body ;  yet  the 
taste  may  seize  with  peculiar  avidity  upon  certain  palata- 
ble objects,  and  the  vividness  as  well  as  the  satisfaction  of 
the  appetite  may  vary  with  the  properties  of  these  different 
foods.  Disease,  moreover,  may  vitiate  the  natural  dis- 
crimination of  the  taste  ;  or  make  the  light  darkness,  and 
the  darkness  as  light,  to  the  inflamed  eye. 

It  is  important  that  this  possibility  of  many  and  great  divergencies  in 
the  use  and  application  of  the  same  fundamental  power  of  human  nature 
should  be  clearly  recognized ;  as  otherwise  the  confused  and  sometimes 
even  conflicting  moral  conclusions  of  men  might  seem  to  invalidate  the 
ethical  principle  itself.  Herbert  Spenser  does  not  escape  this  confusion 
of  reasoning.     See  Justice^  pp.  271  sq. 

Faith  in  its  Christian  form  and  use  is  to  be  distinguished 
from  faith  in  general  in  these  two  respects:  first,  it  is 
faith  adapted  to,  and  in  its  form  determined  by,  its  special 
object:  secondly,  it  is  faith  distinguished  by  its  moral 
intensity.  Both  the  object  which  it  apprehends,  and  the 
moral  power  of  its  relation  to  that  object,  cause  the  faith- 
principle  in  Christianity  to  become  faith  in  the  highest. 


REALIZATION    OF    THE   MORAL   IDEAL  205 

Hence  the  ^Yord  faith  is  commonly  regarded  as  synony- 
mous with  the  principle  of  the  Christian  religion,  as 
though  there  were  no  other  exercise  of  faith,  or  as  though 
the  Christians  alone  live  by  faith,  and  precariously,  while 
the  philosophers  are  permitted  to  bank  safely  on  sufficient 
reason.  But  all  reasoning  proceeds  from  faith,  and  all 
reasoners  make  their  drafts  of  logic  from  the  original 
trust-fund  of  human  nature.  Faith  is  the  natural  capital 
of  all  reasoning.  Break  down  the  principle  of  faith,  and 
logic  itself  would  be  bankrupt.  Faith  in  Christ  is  simply 
faith  in  its  apprehension  of  the  highest  revelation  of  the 
ideal  good,  and  also  faith  in  its  purest  intensity. 

1.  Christian  faith  is  determined  by  the  adaptation  of 
faith  to  the  Christian  Object  of  it. 

(1)  The  Christian  Object  of  faith  is  presented  as  his- 
torical :  (2)  as  actually  working  in  the  life  of  the  world : 
(3)  as  prophetic  and  still  future.  We  proceed  to  con- 
sider the  Christian  specialization  of  faith  in  these  particu- 
lar relations  to  it  of  its  Object.  While  the  full  treatment 
of  much  that  we  must  now  pass  in  rapid  review  belongs 
to  apologetics,  we  cannot  leave  this  portion  of  our  subject 
altogether  without  notice,  because  in  Christian  ethics  we 
affirm  the  obligation  of  Christian  faith.  As  Christians,  we 
say,  men  ought  to  believe  in  Christ.  Why,  then,  or  in  what 
degree,  does  faith  in  this  specific  Christian  Object  of  it 
become  a  duty  ? 

(1)  An  object  of  faith,  which  is  historically  given, 
requires  faith  corresponding  to  the  manner  in  which  such 
object  is  presented  for  acceptance ;  that  manner  being 
historical,  that  is,  through  testimony,  the  particular  kind 
of  faith  (so  far  as  it  is  historical),  which  it  requires, 
can  only  be  assent  of  the  mind  to  external  evidence,  or  to 
testimonies  which  are  proper  subjects  of  criticism  and 
verification.  Faith  in  any  historical  object  of  belief  can 
rise  no  higher  than  this  degree  of  belief  as  intelligent 
assent  to  evidence.  Sucji  faith  never  escapes  entirely  the 
limits  of  probabilism;  all  historical  belief  is  at  best  a 
probable  belief,  although  the  degree  of  2)robability  may 
rise  very  high.     There  will  be  contained  in  any  historical 


206  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

belief  that  general  moral  constant  of  faith  which  is  to  be 
found  under  all  its  forms  and  in  any  degree  of  its  exer- 
cise ;  viz.  trust  in  our  own  minds  and  their  processes  ;  and 
also  there  is  a  moral  variable  in  the  obligation  of  historical 
belief ;  viz.  the  greater  or  less  probability  of  the  evidence. 
The  moral  constant  of  faith  consists  here  in  the  general 
obligation  of  reason  to  accept  evidence.  The  variable 
element  lies  in  the  nature  of  the  evidence.  The  moral 
obligation  of  belief,  which  is  absolute  in  its  rational  prin- 
ciple, varies  in  its  application  to  the  particular  case,  as  the 
weight  of  the  evidence  rises  or  falls.  On  this  plane  of 
probability  (where  all  historical  beliefs  lie),  there  is  truth 
in  the  objection  Avliich  Lessing  urged  with  keen  insist- 
ence against  the  unspiritual  orthodoxism  of  his  day,  that 
"accidental  truths  of  history  can  never  become  the  proof 
of  necessary  truths  of  reason."  ^  Christian  faith  should 
have  replied  to  Lessing's  objection,  not  by  flying  in  the 
face  of  his  proposition,  but  by  a  more  careful  discrimina- 
tion of  its  own  successive  forms  and  degfrees  of  obligfation. 
So  (far  as  it  is  only  an  historical  faith,  and  its  object  is  only 
historically  given,  faith  does  not  meet  us  with  the  absolute 
authority  of  a  necessary  truth  of  reason  ;  our  obligation  of 
Christian  belief  is  an  obligation  of  assent  to  the  most  prob- 
able evidence  concerning  the  person  and  the  works  of 
Christ.  Historical  belief  in  the  historical  Christ,  however 
firm,  is  not  spiritual  faith  in  the  eternal  Word.  An  ethical 
faith  at  this  stage,  or  on  this  plane,  will  accept  and  main- 
tain its  duty  of  biblical  criticism,  historical  investigation, 
and  scholarly  appeal  to  the  law  and  the  testimony. 

We  assume  for  Christian  ethics  at  this  point  the  prob- 
able conclusions  of  biblical  criticism.  As  the  result  of 
the  renewed  historical  study  of  the  origin  of  Christianity 
(since  Strauss),  and  the  modern  microscopic  study  of  the 
New  Testament  literature,  we  are  warranted  in  holding 
that  we  have,  underlying  our  present  gospels,  authentic 
documents,  and  testimonies  from  apostolic  sources,  by 
means  of  which  the  life  of  Jesus  as  his  first  disciples 
saw  and  heard  him,  and  believed  in  him,  is  truthfully 
1  Ueber  den  Beiceis  des  Geistes  und  der  Kraft. 


REALIZATION   OF   THE   MOPwAL   IDEAL  207 

declared  to  us.  Not  mytli  or  legend,  but  the  personal 
uniqueness  and  spiritual  originality  of  Jesus  are  the  expla- 
nation of  the  origin  of  Christianity.  Tlie  hour  of  the 
Christ  was  the  climax  of  history.  It  marks  the  influx  of 
new  spiritual  power  into  the  moral  life  of  the  world. 
Much  more  than  this  concerning  the  m3^sterious  divineness 
and  miraculous  power  of  the  Christ  may  be  claimed  as 
historically  credible ;  but  when  we  reduce  the  historical 
evidence  of  Christianity  to  its  lowest  terms,  belief  in  the 
wonderful  and  creative  personality  of  Jesus  is  the  resid- 
uum, at  least,  of  belief  which  cannot  be  analyzed  into 
any  other  factors,  nor  dissolved  by  the  re-agents  of  biblical 
criticism  into  myth.  To  the  evidence  of  history  to  the 
unique  person  and  creative  spiritual  work  of  Jesus  we 
give  ethical  assent. 

(2)  The  Object  of  Christian  faith  not  only  has  been  his- 
torically given,  but  also  is  present  and  living  in  the  life  of 
faith. 

Among  the  most  singular,  and  at  first  thought  scarcely 
intelligible  sayings  of  Jesus  Avhich  have  come  down  to  us, 
are  his  farewell  words  to  the  disciples  concerning  the  gift 
to  them  of  the  Spirit  after  his  departure,  and  his  continued 
real  presence  with  them  always  to  the  end  of  the  world  in 
the  Spirit,  whom  he  should  send  to  witness  of  him,^  to  take 
of  the  things  of  Christ  and  show  them  unto  them.  Chris- 
tianity thus,  in  the  intention  and  promise  of  its  founder, 
was  to  be  not  merely  a  record  of  the  Son  of  God  on  earth, 
but  a  perpetual  operation  of  the  Spirit  of  God  from 
heaven.  The  Christian  dispensation  —  the  Christian  envi- 
ronment of  life  —  was  to  be  the  presence  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 
Nor  was  that  witness  of  the  Spirit  to  be  communicated  only 
to  the  first  disciples  by  extraordinary  signs,  or  in  transitory, 
supernatural  gifts ;  it  was  to  become  the  common  element 
and  the  daily  light  of  the  life  of  the  whole  succession  and 
communion  of  believers  until  the  Lord  should  again  be 
revealed  in  his  personal  visibility.  "We  believe  in  the 
Holy  Ghost,"  is  the  ancient  and  the  modern  confession  of 
Christ's    Church.     Christian   faith,    accordingly,    has    not 

1  Johuxiv.  26;  xvi.  13-15. 


208  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

only  to  do  with  the  Jesus  of  the  gospels,  but  it  is  some- 
thinor  more  than  assent  to  the  historical  Christ;  it  has 
further,  and  still  more  intimately  to  do  with  the  presence 
in  the  world  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ.  It  confesses,  there- 
fore, the  obligation  of  spiritual  responsiveness  to  the 
influence  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  As  the  object  of  present 
apprehension  Christian  experience  presents  a  living  power 
for  faith  to  receive.  Not  only  was  Christianity  the  world's 
spiritual  sunrise  ;  it  is  the  light  of  life  now  in  our  skies. 
Open  to  our  observation  in  the  characters  of  others,  and 
possible  to  us  in  the  inward  truth  of  our  own  lives,  are 
mental  and  moral  experiences  which  bear  witness  to  the 
healing  and  quickening  touch  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ  on 
the  spirit  wdiich  is  in  man,  —  experiences  which  contain 
within  themselves  some  diviner  secret  of  life,  joy,  and 
peace  than  men  had  ever  known  before  Christ  came  in 
the  flesh,  or  than  can  be  understood  now  without  the 
influence  of  the  Christ  who  is  known  after  the  Spirit.  As 
from  a  new  and  true  spiritual  centre  we  see  human  charac- 
ters reorganized  and  expanding,  gaining  perfect  poise,  and 
revealing  power  of  harmonious  enlargement.  Ethical  con- 
version, as  a  result  of  the  moral  force  flowing  into  the  life 
of  man  from  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  is  a  known  and  familiar 
fact.  We  witness  still,  as  the  immediate  working  of  this 
new  energy  of  spiritual  life,  not  only  inward  changes,  and 
radically  different  subjective  states,  such  as  a  new  mind 
towards  God,  and  joy  and  peace  in  believing  ;  but  also,  we 
observe,  in  consequence  of  it,  marked  outward  results, — 
changes  in  conduct  and  throughout  the  relations  of  men 
towards  one  another  and  towards  the  world  in  which  we 
now  exist.  The  aspect  of  sea  and  sky,  of  birth  and  death, 
of  friendship  and  of  home,  all  is  changed  to  the  be- 
liever ;  a  new  light  seems  to  fall  from  the  Spirit  over  all. 
We  witness  as  present  and  undeniable  fact  the  realization 
of  the  words  of  one  of  the  first  disciples :  "  Wherefore  if 
any  man  is  in  Christ,  he  is  a  new  creature  :  the  old  things 
are  passed  away ;  behold,  they  are  become  new."  ^ 

Now  in  this  Christian  experience  we  have  more  than 

1  2  Cor.  V.  17. 


EEALIZATION   OF   THE   MORAL   IDEAL  209 

rational  assent  to  historical  probabilities.  It  is  the  an- 
swer of  the  spirit  within  to  the  Spirit  of  God.  It  is 
the  Christ  known  after  the  Spirit,  and  no  more  after  the 
flesh.  Neither  the  validity  nor  the  significance  of  this 
experience  of  Christ  after  the  Spirit  can  be  destroyed  by 
the  simple  assertion  that  it  is  only  a  faith,  an  inward 
experience,  a  spiritual  phenomenon.  For  all  experience, 
as  we  have  seen,  is  grounded  in  the  general  principle  of 
faith ;  all  knowledge  is  at  bottom  an  act  of  trust.  The 
only  legitimate  question  is  whether  this  particular  act  of 
faith,  this  special  application  of  the  principle  of  faith,  is 
allowable  or  not.  And  the  answer  to  that  question  is 
given  in  the  real  contents  of  Christian  experience  as  a 
present  spiritual  life,  and  it  is  verified  and  confirmed  by 
the  constant  repetition  of  that  experience  under  similar 
conditions  of  life.  The  verifying  test,  in  other  words,  of 
repeated  spiritual  experiment,  —  the  same  phenomenon 
occurring  with  constancy  under  similar  conditions,  —  is  met 
and  satisfied  in  this  Christian  experience  of  the  Spirit. 
Given  similar  conditions,  —  the  preaching  of  the  gospel, 
some  knowledge  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  a  penitent  dis- 
position, —  and  the  same  experience  of  trust  in  Christ,  the 
joy  of  a  new  obedience,  and  the  blossoming  of  hope  im- 
mortal in  the  heart  may  be  expected  to  recur  again  and 
again.  The  experience  is  sufficiently  constant,  and  it  has 
been  verified  for  eio-hteen  centuries  throuo-h  a  succession  of 
lives  sufficiently  long  and  continuous,  to  establish  a  law  of 
spiritual  life  according  to  Christ  Jesus.  The  exceptions 
which  seem  to  occur  do  not  disprove  the  rule  ;  for  there  are 
confessedly  hindrances  and  limitations  enough  in  our  igno- 
rance, as  well  as  in  our  sinfulness,  to  prevent  the  same 
working  of  the  same  Spirit  everj^where,  and  to  account  for 
some  seeming  failures  in  the  manifestation  of  its  power. 
But,  on  the  whole,  and  as  a  law  of  life,  the  Christ  who 
gave  to  disciples  in  Jerusalem  the  promise  of  his  Spirit, 
has  always  been  with  men,  and  is  now  working  the  greater 
works  of  faith  in  the  life  of  humanity.  The  typical  Chris- 
tian experience  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ  is  an  experience 
which  is  of  no  private  interpret^ation ;  it  contains  within 


210  CHEISTIAX  ETHICS 

itself  a  tendency  toAvards  universality :  "  Of  tlie  increase 
of  his  government  and  of  peace  there  shall  be  no  end."  ^ 

(3)  The  Object  of  Christian  faith  is  still  in  part  pro- 
phetic, and  consequentl}^  the  faith  is  modified  by  this  pro- 
phetic character  of  its  object. 

The  Christ  in  whom  disciples  believe  is  not  simply  the 
historical  Jesus  ;  neither  is  he  only  the  ideal  Christ  as 
revealed  by  the  Spirit  in  the  continuous  Christian  con- 
sciousness of  his  Church ;  he  is  also  the  Christ  to  come, 
—  the  Christ  whose  second  coming  is  expected  by  faith. 
Hence  faith  in  him  must  be  characterized  by  a  certain 
prophetic  element  and  tone ;  it  is  faith  in  an  object  not 
yet  fully  revealed,  or  completely  known.  The  object  of 
Christian  faith  is  neither  to  be  held  within  the  limitations 
of  the  past,  nor  is  it  contained  within  the  bounds  of  this 
world's  history.  It  transcends  the  spiritual  imagination  of 
this  present  age,  and  appears  before  the  uplifted  eye  of 
faith  in  the  glory  of  the  clouds  of  heaven.  The  Christ  is 
the  best  known,  yet  the  unknown  object  of  man's  love  and 
hope  ;  he  was  the  Son  of  man  on  earth ;  he  is  the  light  of 
the  truest  Christian  life  of  the  present  age ;  and  also  he 
is  the  unseen  glory  of  future  revelation.  While  the  dis- 
ciples of  old  were  looking,  a  cloud  of  heaven  received  him 
from  their  sight.  So  the  Object  of  Christian  faith  has 
vanished  into  the  prophetic  mystery  of  the  hereafter ;  and 
we  know  not  what  we  shall  be,  for  we  cannot  fully  know 
what  He  is  like  until  we  shall  see  Him  even  as  He  is.^ 

This  prophetic  as  well  as  historic  character  of  the  Christ 
imparts  to  Christian  faith  a  certain  indefiniteness  of  imag- 
ination, a  glow  of  feeling,  and  a  largeness  of  hope,  which 
distinguish  it  from  belief  in  the  known  laws  of  nature, 
or  even  in  the  moral  order  of  the  world.  The  Christian 
faith,  from  the  prophetic  nature  of  its  object,  must  always 
be  expansive,  expectant,  ready  to  take  wing,  and  capable  of 
ever  new  fulfilments  of  itself.  The  ethical  contents  of  a 
prophetic  faith  in  an  ideal  which  is  now  known  in  part, 
cannot  be  bound  to  the  letter  of  the  Scripture,  nor  fixed  in 
the  thought  of  any  passing  age  ;  they  are  the  ethics  of  a 

1  Is.  ix.  7.  2  1  John  iii.  2. 


REALIZATION   OF   THE   MORAL   IDEAL  211 

faith  striving  for  ever  higher  realizations  of  itself,  and 
looking  towards  larger  completions  of  life  than  as  yet 
appear.  The  Christian  faith  in  the  Christ  who  is  to 
come  in  glory,  is  consequently,  on  the  ethical  side  of  it,  a 
faith  in  moral  progress,  and  fulfilments  beyond  fulfilments 
of  its  conception  of  good. 

The  progressive  character  of  Christian  ethics  is  no  acci- 
dental thing,  but  it  is  secured  in  the  nature  of  the  object 
of  our  faith,  the  Christ  who  is  to  come,  as  well  as  the 
Christ  who  has  already  come  on  earth.  What  other  faith 
may  be  laid  at  the  foundation  of  ethics  which  shall  so 
secure  in  itself  the  growth  and  expansion  of  existing  ethi- 
cal types  ? 

2.  The  general  faith-principle  in  human  nature  is  pecul- 
iarly intensified  in  the  Christian  application  and  exercise 
of  it. 

We  have  just  seen  in  what  directions,  and  to  what 
extent,  faith  in  its  Christian  exercise  is  modified  by  the 
nature  of  its  object ;  we  notice  still  further  the  peculiar 
intensification  and  luminousness  of  faith  when  fixed  on 
Christ.  The  object  to  which  this  faith  is  attracted  is  the 
Light  of  the  world ;  the  faith  which  is  fixed  on  Him  be- 
comes full  of  light.  The  spiritual  splendor  of  the  object 
which  is  seen  and  followed,  is  reflected  in  the  faith  which 
is  turned  towards  the  Christ.  Hence  faith  in  Christ  is 
distinguished  by  its  sunny  certainty.  It  is  the  one  faith 
which  becomes  sure  of  itself.  The  clear  certainty  of 
Christian  faith  has  always  been  one  of  its  remarkable 
spiritual  characteristics.  Such  assurance  of  spirit  in 
things  unseen  and  eternal  is  phenomenal.  Faith,  which 
often  grows  dim  when  fed  only  from  nature's  resources,  is 
quickened  into  pure  flame,  and  shines  with  a  revealing 
light  over  all  the  conditions  of  life,  when  it  is  kindled 
anew  in  the  soul  by  the  Spirit  of  Christ.  The  calm,  death- 
less assurance  of  the  flrst  disciples  in  their  belief  in  Jesus, 
was  one  of  the  moral  miracles  of  human  history.  This 
faith  showed  at  once  its  power  to  make  martyrs.  Men 
were  willing  to  die  in  their  vision  of  Christ.  And  that 
power  to  make  men  sure  of  it,  even  though  they  must  die 


212  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

for  it,  was  no  transitory  effect  of  this  new  faith ;  it  was 
not  the  consequence  of  a  passing  religious  excitement  in 
history ;  it  has  been  the  constant  working  and  continuous 
energy  of  this  faith  in  human  experience.  It  is  its  nature 
-to  attract  disciples,  and  of  disciples  to  make  apostles,  who 
are  confident  enough  to  preach  it  as  God's  truth ;  and  of 
apostles  to  make  witnesses  who  are  willing  to  die  for 
Christ's  sake. 

This  luminous  and  steady  shining  of  the  light  which 
dwells  as  a  "  spiritual  splendor  "  in  the  Christian  faith,  is 
to  be  observed  not  only  in  the  great  apostles  and  martyred 
witnesses  of  it,  but  also  in  the  common  lives  of  multitudes 
who  are  moved  by  some  true  influence  of  it,  although  in 
no  unusual  degree  of  its  power.  It  is  the  faith  which 
persists,  as  no  other,  through  all  the  changes  of  their 
earthly  experience.  It  is  the  deeper  note  of  their  lives. 
It  is  the  continuous  force  of  character  amid  the  vicissitudes 
of  fortune.  The  storms  which  scatter  all  else  do  not  up- 
root this  faith  ;  the  temptations  which  rise  like  a  flood 
against  other  virtue,  find  in  the  steadfastness  of  this  prin- 
ciple a  barrier  beyond  which  their  waves  can  go  no  farther. 
It  is  a  faith  which  sees  in  the  light  of  its  own  object  so 
clearly,  that  all  other  lights  seem  as  shadows  to  it ;  and 
though  often  there  have  been  heaped  upon  it  arguments 
that  might  destroy  it,  it  has  blazed  up,  inextinguishable, 
through  them  all,  and  it  will  shine  again  in  its  own 
quenchless  flame.  The  moral  persistence  of  this  faith, 
even  against  reasons,  or  without  reasons,  or  in  calm  confi- 
dence of  appeal  to  reasons  yet  to  be  rendered,  is  one  of 
the  ethical  wonders  of  Christian  history.  It  is  the  vital 
faith  of  humanity,  having  correspondence  with  all  the 
vitalizing  forces  of  the  universe.  The  sun  finds  it,  the  air 
waits  for  it,  the  dews  of  heaven  descend  upon  it;  it  springs 
up  ever  afresh,  and  grows,  and  blossoms,  and  the  fruits  of 
it  remain. 

We  have  now  completed  our  survey  of  the  chief  eras 
of  moral  development,  and  their  corresponding  principles 
of  moral  appropriation.  While  these  eras  are  clearly  dis- 
tinguishable in  their  prevailing  characteristics  and  their 


REALIZATION   OF   THE   MORAL   IDEAL  213 

dominant  principles,  they  cannot  historically  be  sharply 
and  absolutely  separated,  as  though  there  were  no  working 
of  the  higher  power  in  the  lower  forms  of  moral  life,  or 
no  survival  of  the  earlier  in  the  later  periods  of  moral 
evolution.  For  the  moral  order  of  humanity  is  continu- 
ous as  the  natural  order,  and,  w^hile  new  principles  of  life 
or  spiritual  energy  may  be  introduced,  no  sudden  breaks 
or  absolutely  new  beginnings  are  to  be  found  in  the  course 
of  moral  development,  as  there  are  none  in  physical  evolu- 
tion. Moreover,  in  the  progress  of  human  history,  for 
considerable  periods,  a  certain  parallelism  of  moral  move- 
ments and  principles  may  be  discerned.  Thus  there  was 
a  course  of  progressive  prophecy  accompanying  the  law  of 
Israel ;  and  in  Christianity  the  Church  was  formed  at  Jeru- 
salem in  the  shadow  of  the  Temple,  and  the  Jewish  Sab- 
bath lingered  in  the  Jewish  Christian  worship  beside  the 
Lord's  day.  The  word  of  the  Baptist,  "  He  must  increase, 
but  I  must  decrease,"  is  true  of  every  preparatory  dispen- 
sation in  its  relation  to  the  better  age  to  come ;  the  two 
co-exist  for  a  period  of  time,  the  one  diminishing  as  the 
other  becomes  controlling  —  the  preparatory  age  passing 
not  with  sudden  violence  into  the  new,  but  with  gradual 
absorption  of  its  truth  in  the  light  of  the  dawning  day. 
Moreover,  the  higher  life  has  its  germinal  power  in  the 
low^er,  and  signs  and  uses  even  of  the  lower  may  survive 
in  the  higher.  So  there  is  gospel  in  law,  and  law  in 
gospel  —  a  previous  divine  promise  also  involved  in  the 
divine  comrnandment,  and  a  law  of  God  remaining  in  the 
free  obedience  of  grace.  The  period  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, in  its  broad  contrast  with  the  Christian  era,  was  dis- 
tinctively the  dispensation  of  the  law  which  came  by  Moses 
in  its  antithesis  to  the  grace  and  truth  which  came  by 
Christ.  But  the  separation  between  the  two  was  crossed 
by  the  prophetic  hopes,  and  the  contrast  diminished  by  the 
approaches  towards  the  latter  day  glory  which  were  made 
in  the  psalms  and  by  the  Messianic  expectations  of  Israel. 
So,  likewise,  when  the  new  dispensation  was  fully  come, 
the  law  w^as  not  abrogated  but  fulfilled.  To  a  certain 
extent  in  historical  Christianity  the  legal  age  lingers,  and 


214  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

the  necessities  of  moral  discipline  and  the  ethical  prepara- 
tion of  the  peoples  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  still  render 
necessar}^  a  certain  externalizing  of  the  spirit  of  Christian- 
ity in  custom,  outward  observances,  institutional  authority, 
and  the  law  of  Christian  opinion.  In  the  completion  of 
man's  moral  development,  at  the  close  of  the  ethical  strug- 
gle and  triumph  of  the  ages,  the  several  dispensations, 
wliich  have  had  their  distinctively  marked  eras  in  the 
course  of  the  development,  will  be  found  to  have  become 
coincident  and  harmonious ;  the  lines  of  the  command- 
ments and  the  tendencies  of  free  action  will  fall  together; 
the  law  and  the  gospel  will  meet  in  the  righteousness  of 
love.     Life  at  last  in  all  its  parts  shall  beat  one  music  out. 

From  our  whole  survey  thus  far  of  the  ethical  nature 
and  history  of  man,  we  have  now  gained  some  conception 
of  the  Christian  Ideal  as  the  highest  conceivable  moral 
good  ;  and  also  we  have  learned  how  in  the  age  of  the 
Christ  the  new  birth  of  the  Christian  personality  has  been 
brought  to  pass.  We  shall  have  to  do  in  the  following 
chapters  with  the  last  and  highest  product  of  man's  moral 
history,  that  is,  with  the  new  man  in  Christ  Jesus.  It 
is  the  further  task  of  Christian  ethics  to  classify  his  vir- 
tues, to  define  his  duties,  to  judge  concerning  his  power  of 
realizing  still  more  signally  the  ideal  which  is  the  forma- 
tive, constructive  principle  of  his  personality.  And  Chris- 
tian ethics,  in  the  further  consideration  of  its  object  —  the 
Christian  personality  —  has  not  merely  to  observe  the 
Christian  man  as  an  individual  only,  in  the  realization  of 
individual  virtue,  but  also  it  has  to  study  and  to  draw  its 
deductions  from  the  new  humanity,  which  is  created  in 
Christ  Jesus,  in  its  development  through  mutually  related 
Christian  persons,  and  in  its  progress  towards  that  social 
good  which  is  to  be  the  consummation  of  the  whole  life 
of  man. 

Having  gained  for  ethics  the  point  of  view  of  the  Chris- 
tian personality,  we  shall  not  be  occupied,  in  the  subse- 
quent pursuit  of  it,  with  moral  abstractions.  The  subject- 
matter  of  our  further  inquiry  is  not  the  realm  of  moral 
ideas,  but  the  concrete  spheres  of  Christian  life  and  Chris- 


REALIZATION   OF  THE  MOEAL   IDEAL  215 

tian  society.  We  are  now  to  enter  not  the  shadowy 
regions  of  moral  philosophy,  pursuing  in  endless  circles 
definitions  of  moral  good ;  but  we  are  called  to  enter,  and 
with  humbleness  of  spirit,  that  most  real  and  concrete 
realm  of  ethical  religious  life,  which  is  the  kingdom  of 
God  on  earth.  Our  Christian  ethics,  therefore,  must  keep 
out  among  the  moral  realities  of  life.  Christian  ethics 
must  fit  life.  It  must  be  true  to  life,  and  true  for  life. 
Christian  ethics  is  no  abstract  philosophy  of  virtue,  but 
the  practical  Christian  science  of  humanity. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  FORMS    IN  WHICH   THE  CHRISTIAN    IDEAL    IS   TO  BE 

REALIZED 

The  forms  in  which  from  age  to  age  the  ideal  is  realized, 
may  be  regarded  from  two  different  points  of  view :  we  may 
observe  them  as  conditions  of  the  general  welfare  in  their 
social  aspects  ;  or  we  may  study  them  in  their  individual 
concreteness  as  conditions  of  personal  well-being.  In  the 
first  and  larger  view  we  regard  them  as  the  human  goods 
which  have  been  won  by  mankind ;  in  the  latter  case  we 
regard  them  as  the  particular  forms  of  the  ideal  life  to 
which  individuals  may  have  attained.  As  pertaining  to 
society  they  are  the  goods  for  man  ;  as  belonging  to  individ- 
uals they  are  the  virtues  of  men.  The  human  goods  and 
personal  virtues  may,  however,  be  considered  jointly,  and 
without  need  of  a  constant  separation  in  our  ethics,  for 
they  are  always  bound  up  together  in  real  life.  The  per- 
sonal virtue  belongs  to  and  helps  secure  some  general 
good ;  and  the  human  welfare  reflects  the  individual  vir- 
tues and  enhances  them.  Individual  men,  considered  apart 
from  all  social  relations,  would  be  but  shadows  of  men. 
Men  live  actually  in  human  relations,  and  real  virtue  or 
vice  can  be  measured  only  in  view  of  the  conditions  of 
society  under  which  the  individual  is  born  and  trained. 
The  practical  importance  of  keeping  individual  and  social 
ethics  together  in  our  discussion  of  virtues  and  duties  will 
appear  from  the  two  following  considerations. 

First,  virtue  itself  can  neither  be  attained  nor  be  rightly 

estimated  in  abstraction  of  the  individual  from  the  social 

welfare,  any  more  than  the  perfectness  of  a  bodily  organ, 

or  any  organic  function,  can  be  determined  apart  from  its 

216 


FOEMS   IX   WHICH   THE   IDEAL   IS    REALIZED  217 

relation  to  the  whole  living  tissue  in  which  it  exists.  A 
perfect  brain,  a  perfect  heart,  a  perfect  eye,  —  there  is  no 
such  thing  apart  from  the  welfare  of  the  whole  body  of 
which  it  is  a  member.  A  microscope,  a  telescope,  or  such 
an  instrument  of  vision  as  an  optician  may  make,  might 
be  better,  in  itself  considered,  as  a  contrivance  for  gather- 
ing the  greatest  number  of  rays  of  light  to  a  focus,  than  is 
the  eye  of  an  eagle,  or  any  living  creature.  But  such  a 
perfectly  conceived  optical  instrument  might  be  the  poor- 
est kind  of  an  eye  for  the  uses  of  a  bird  in  the  air,  or  for 
our  human  purposes.  Similarly  we  cannot  isolate  moral 
qualities  from  moral  conditions  ;  we  cannot  hold  the  vir- 
tues apart  from  the  general  moral  welfare  of  humanity. 
The  personal  virtues  have  each  and  all  of  them  organic 
aptitudes  and  relations.  Nor  can  we  conceive  of  the  per- 
fectness  of  any  individual  character  apart  from  the  further 
conception  of  a  perfect  society  in  whicll  it  has  its  place 
and  exercise.  Tlie  ideal  virtues  are  manifestations  of  per- 
fect personal  lives  in  the  perfect  society.^ 

It  may  be  questioned  whether  any  virtue  is  capable  of  complete  indi- 
vidualization ;  all  the  virtues,  even  the  most  personal,  may  be  seen  to 
have  some  social  character.  Piety,  for  example,  is  as  purely  a  personal 
virtue  as  can  be  imagined  ;  yet  personal  piety,  though  an  immediate  rela- 
tion between  the  soul  and  its  God,  becomes  also  reflexly,  and  in  its  actual 
working  out  in  the  life,  a  social  act,  affecting  the  social  welfare. 

Secondly,  this  necessity  of  keeping  individual  and  social 
ethics  in  close  correspondence  appears  further  from  the 
fact  that  it  is  impossible  to  form  an  adequate  or  just  judg- 
ment of  the  degree  of  individual  virtuousness  apart  from 
the  general  moral  conditions  and  standards  of  an  age.  In 
the  judgments  which  we  form  of  individual  conduct  two 
considerations  will  enter ;  the  one  is  the  social  moral  fac- 
tor (possessing  a  known  and  fixed  value),  the  other  is  the 

1  There  is  profound  truth  in  the  remark  of  Mr.  Green:  "  No  individual  cnn 
make  a  conscience  for  himself.  He  always  needs  a  society  to  make  it  for 
Yam."— Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  p.  351.  Similarly  Dorner  says:  "The  truth 
of  every  individual  personality  requires  also  that  the  spirit  of  the  commu- 
nity should  dwell  in  it,  and  the  truth  of  the  communities  requires  that  free 
personalities  should  be  their  bearers."  — .System,  der  Christ.  Sitteiilehre,  s.267. 
We  may  admit  also  in  this  connection  the  value  of  what  Paulsen  calls  "  social 
teleology,"  in  determining  what  is  good. 


218  CHKISTIAN   ETHICS 

individual  variable  of  virtue.  Both  enter  together  as  fac- 
tors in  the  moral  equations  of  history.  The  general  moral 
standard  of  a  community,  or  the  good  which  has  already 
been  realized  in  an  age,  forms  a  moral  level,  or  social  moral 
plain,  from  which  individual  character  cannot  entirely  sepa- 
rate itself,  and  by  means  of  which  also  the  comparative 
altitude  of  individual  virtue  may  be  measured.  The  per- 
sonal virtue  is  always  relative  to  the  moral  constant  of  the 
age.  To  measure  the  highest  attainment  of  one  age  by 
the  moral  standard  of  a  different  age  would  be  injustice. 
An  age  of  low  morals  —  an  age  whose  moral  average  is 
barbarous,  or  half-civilized  —  may  present  individual  in- 
stances which,  when  measured  from  its  own  level,  rise  to 
a  high  moral  altitude  ;  while,  conversely,  a  man  who  lives 
on  an  elevated  plain  of  social  morality  may  be  seen  to 
possess  a  low  degree  of  personal  virtue  when  judged  by 
the  moral  attainment  of  his  time,  although  he  may  stand 
far  above  the  most  virtuous  savage,  and  look  down  even 
on  some  aspects  of  the  ancient  biblical  morality. 

Perfect  virtue  is  to  be  measured  on  the  plane  of  a  per- 
fect social  good.  In  that  case  all  will  be  levelled  up.  In 
that  conceivable  perfection  all  private  virtues  would  exist 
perfectly,  and  in  the  completest  realizations  of  them,  in  the 
one  social  good ;  their  variety  would  consist  not  in  dif- 
ferences of  moral  degree,  but  in  distinctions  of  combina- 
tion, as  pure  colors  may  be  blended  in  most  diversified 
flowers.  But  while  the  process  of  realization  of  the  moral 
ideal  is  still  going  on,  and  a  succession  of  moral  dispensa- 
tions is  passing  ac^ross  the  stage  of  our  human  history,  the 
virtue  and  the  age  cannot  be  judged  except  in  conjunc- 
tion ;  the  personal  character  finds  its  place  and  has  its 
limitations  in  the  existing  social  type. 

Not  only  for  the  sake  of  true  moral  judgments,  but  also 
in  the  interest  of  a  sound  moral  education,  should  indi- 
vidual and  social  ethics  be  kept  in  continuous  adjustment 
and  readjustment.  For  the  virtue  which  is  demanded  by 
one  age  may  become  the  fault  of  another  time.  A  good 
patriarchal  law  might  prove  the  worst  civic  ordinance.  A 
feudal  virtue  might  be  the  industrial  crime  of  a  later  age. 


FORMS   IN   WHICH   THE   IDEAL   IS   REALIZED  219 

All  life  is  related  to  environment.  Virtue,  as  moral  health, 
must  have  some  fitness  to  its  social  conditions.  The  right 
character,  the  sound  growth  and  vigor  of  a  man,  will  show 
some  adaptation  to  the  laws  and  conditions  of  the  social 
whole  from  which  he  cannot  be  isolated.  To  ignore  these 
external  conditions  of  moral  life  in  a  theory  of  virtue 
would  be  to  become  a  moral  doctrinaire.  To  forget  or  to 
despise  them  in  practice  would  be  to  incur  the  danger  of 
making  good  evil,  and  evil  good.  Yet  possibly  just  be- 
cause the  method  of  ethics  has  been  too  much  to  isolate 
and  to  dissect  man's  moral  nature,  rather  than  to  study 
sympathetically  his  actual  life,  books  on  moral  philoso- 
phy have  become  proverbially  as  dry  as  anatomy,  and  as 
useless  as  a  skeleton.  Virtue  is  flesh  and  blood,  and  vital 
joy.  Virtue  has  color,  life,  and  reality.  It  cannot  breathe 
in  a  vacuum.  Virtue  is  character  in  healthful  touch  with 
life,  and  the  spirit  of  life. 

It  is  as  difficult  to  enumerate  the  virtues,  or  to  reduce 
them  to  any  system,  as  it  is  to  count  the  hues  of  a  sunset 
and  to  reduce  their  evanescent  tints  to  a  definite  scale  of 
color.  In  proportion  almost  as  nature  assumes  forms  of 
beauty,  or  breaks  in  flowers  or  sunlit  clouds  into  har- 
monies of  color,  the  hard  and  fast  lines  of  scientific  defi- 
nition are  cast  off ;  while  nature  waits  for  interpretation,  it 
defies  analysis.  Similarly  in  the  moral  sphere  classifica- 
tion has  its  proper  place  only  among  the  elements  ;  while 
the  rich  and  manifold  ethical  life  of  man  escapes  analysis 
as  it  grows  morally  beautiful,  and  is  unfolded  in  the  varied 
hues  and  changeful  iridescence  of  the  virtues.  Descrip- 
tion must  here  take  the  place  of  definition.  Or  the  funda- 
mental colors  of  the  spectrum  of  virtue  may  be  distin- 
guished by  the  moral  philosophers,  while  the  finer  grada- 
tions, as  well  as  the  ever  fresh  combinations  and  diversified 
harmonies  of  its  hues  must  be  left  to  the  poets  who  are  the 
first  moral  interpreters  of  life.  The  moral  philosophers  of 
antiquity  have  named  for  us  the  primal  and  principal  char- 
acteristics of  virtue  ;  and  on  the  whole  no  better  descriptive 
analysis  of  moral  qualities  has  been  given  than  Ave  may  find 
in  the  classic  enumeration  of  the  cardinal  virtues. 


220  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

Two  general  methods  of  classification  have  been  followed 
in  the  books.  By  some  writers  the  several  virtues  have 
been  grouped  around  the  different  objects  towards  which 
our  moral  activities  may  be  directed,  and  as  many  groups 
of  virtues  have  been  distinguished  as  there  are  specific- 
objects  of  moral  endeavor.  This  method  is  a  tabulation 
of  virtues,  rather  than  a  philosophic  classification  of  them. 
Generally  another,  more  philosophical  method  has  been 
adopted,  —  that  of  classifying  the  virtues  with  reference 
to  some  principle  of  virtue. 

Aristotle,  finding  the  virtuous  quality  in  the  habit  or  disposition  of  the 
will  to  seek  the  highest  practical  good  which  a  man  can  attain,  proceeds 
from  his  principle  of  virtue  very  naturally  to  classify  the  virtues  accord- 
ing to  the  rank  or  dignity  of  the  functions  to  which  they  have  reference. 
So  his  order  of  the  virtues  advances  from  the  necessary  and  useful  to  the 
beautiful.     (See  Ueberweg,  Hist,  of  Phil,  vol,  i.  p.  173.) 

Plato's  principle  of  virtue  was  more  subjective  and  idealistic.  To  the 
Platonists  virtue  consisted  in  the  greatest  possible  likeness  to  the  divine 
image,  the  highest  good,  God.  Hence  the  principle  of  the  Platonic  clas- 
sification of  virtues  was  derived  from  the  fitness  of  the  soul  for  its  proper 
task,  which  is  the  attainment  of  the  morally  beautiful,  the  good.  The 
different  functions  of  human  nature  in  relation  to  practical  ends  do  not, 
as  with  Aristotle,  yield  the  several  virtues  ;  but  rather  the  capabilities  of 
the  soul  for  the  good  determine  the  forms  of  the  cardinal  virtues.  Thus 
man's  chief  power  and  function  of  knowing  determines  the  primal  vir- 
tue of  wisdom.  The  Platonic  psychology,  in  short,  yields  directly  the 
scheme  of  the  Platonic  virtues.  Wisdom,  valor,  temperance  have  refer- 
ence to  the  cognitive,  the  active,  and  the  appetitive  parts  of  human 
nature,  and  justice,  the  fourth  virtue,  is  the  balance  or  harmony  of  them 
all. 

The  ethics  of  the  schoolmen  follow  in  the  main  the  classic  schemes  of 
the  virtues,  but  graft  often  clumsily  upon  them  certain  supernatural  vir- 
tues. In  such  juxtaposition  of  the  natural  and  the  supernatural  in  ethics, 
moral  unity  was  lost.  There  was  reproduced  in  ethics  the  same  dualism 
which  runs  through  the  theology  and  the  politics  of  the  mediaeval  Church, 
The  temporal  and  spiritual  powers,  alike  in  the  doctrine,  the  ethics,  and 
the  ecclesiastical  domination  of  mediaeval  Rome,  were  held  in  a  fictitious 
and  unstable  unity.  The  higher  and  abiding  unity  of  the  Spirit  had  not 
been  attained.  The  modern  utilitarian  ethics  finds,  broadly  speaking,  the 
formative  principle  of  virtue  in  the  fitness  of  an  action  for  the  largest 
conservation  of  life.  The  forms  of  the  virtues  may  thus  be  determined, 
quite  in  the  Aristotelian  fashion,  by  reference  to  the  ends  of  utility. 

An  original,  yet  too  artificial  classification  of  the  virtues  was  adopted 
by  Rothe  in  his  2'heological  Ethics  (vol.  iii.  §  602  ff.).  Virtue,  Rothe 
argues,  consists  in  the  individual's  participation  in,  and  free  production 
of,  the  one  highest  good.     The  several  virtues  are  thus  determined  both 


FORMS   IX   WHICH   THE   IDEAL   IS   REALIZED  221 

subjectively  and  objectively  ;  with  reference,  first,  to  the  twofold  nature 
or  function  of  the  individual  life,  viz.  self-consciousness,  and  self-activ- 
ity ;  and,  secondly,  with  reference  to  their  universal  relations.  Hence 
there  are  two  fundamental  forms  of  virtue,  reasonableness  and  freedom. 
These  are  the  general  forms  of  virtue  as  determined  with  reference  to  the 
two  general  functions  of  man's  life.  From  these  general  virtues,  as  they 
are  to  be  still  further  defined  objectively  in  relation  to  the  idea  of  the 
highest  good,  the  several  concrete  virtues  may  be  derived. 

Virtuous  character  impresses  us  as  a  unity  of  qualities. 
Whatever  the  particular  combination  of  virtues  in  the 
character,  for  instance,  of  the  warrior,  the  statesman,  the 
good  citizen,  the  true  friend,  the  coordination  of  the  vir- 
tues in  that  character  impresses  us  as  an  organic  whole. 
The  qualities  in  which  the  character  consists  are  not  acci- 
dentally or  mechanically  associated,  but  vitally  adapted 
and  correlated.  Moreover,  the  great  variety  of  vital  com- 
binations of  virtues  in  different  characters  indicates  that 
the  virtues  are  all  organically  related,  or  fitted  to  enter 
into  oro-anic  relations  Avith  one  another  in  character. 
There  is  a  vital  relationship,  an  organic  unity  of  the  vir- 
tues. Though  existing  in  separate  groups  in  different  per- 
sons, they  are  manifestly  adapted  to  each  other,  and  have 
natural  affinities,  and  were  not  formed  to  remain  in  isola- 
tion. The  virtues  are  all  of  the  same  kind  and  blood. 
Their  natural  relationship  is  an.  admitted  ethical  fact. 

This  unity  of  the  virtues  is,  in  the  first  instance,  a  unity 
of  principle.  One  virtuous  quality  pervades  all  the  vir- 
tues. There  is  one  vital  and  formative  principle  of  virtue. 
Secondly,  this  relationship  of  the  specific  virtues  is  a  unity 
of  derivation.  Each  separate  virtue  descends  from  the 
same  original  source,  and  is  a  particular  embodiment  of 
the  common  principle  of  virtue.  All  are  in  relation  be- 
cause all  have  one  origin  and  principle ;  as  in  physics  the 
transformation  of  energy  shows  the  primal  unity  of  force. 
Hence  a  true  description  of  the  virtues,  and  still  more,  a 
philosophical  classification  of  them,  must  proceed  from  the 
idea  of  the  simple  energy,  or  primitive,  formative  principle 
of  virtue. 

We  might  find  our  way  further,  accordingly,  into  this 
portion   of  our  subject  by  borrowing  from  philosophical 


222  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

ethics  some  account  of  the  constitutive  principle  of  virtue. 
But  moral  j)l^ilosophy  has  several,  and  not  accordant, 
answers  to  give  to  this  question,  —  What  is  virtue  ?  In 
what  lies  the  primal  and  essential  virtuous  quality  of  an 
action  ? 

In  Christian  ethics  our  answer  to  this  question,  on  which 
the  further  classification  and  description  of  the  virtues 
depend,  should  proceed  directly  from  the  Christian  con- 
sciousness of  virtue.  The  distinctive  idea  of  the  Chris- 
tian personality  will  disclose  immediately  the  Christian 
principle  of  virtue.  That  which  makes  the  Christian  char- 
acter what  it  is,  is  its  virtuous  principle.  The  material 
principle,  in  other  words,  of  the  Christian  consciousness, 
is  its  principle  of  virtue.  How,  then,  shall  we  further 
determine  this? 

I.  By  an  analysis  of  the  Christian  consciousness  in  its 
ethical  contents.  The  answer  to  the  question,  what  is 
virtue  ?  is  to  be  sought  and  found  in  the  assertion  which 
the  Christian  consciousness  makes  concerning  its  constitu- 
ent principle  or  essential  nature.  We  are  to  seek  for  this 
disclosure  of  the  true  nature  of  virtue  in  the  mature  and 
most  perfectly  formed  Christian  consciousness  of  life. 
Given  such  ethical  embodiment,  such  manifestation  of 
moral  life  in  its  highest  and.  purest  realization,  what  has 
it  to  declare  of  its  own  life-principle  ?  what  has  it  to  dis- 
close of  its  vital  and  essential  virtue  ?  In  general,  the 
idea  of  the  Christian  man  which  informs  and  irradiates  his 
whole  moral  character  is  the  thought  of  being  made  Christ- 
like. The  ethical  passion  of  Christians  is  for  Christlike- 
ness. 


So  Professor  Tholuck,  whose  memory  has  still  a  rare  religious  fra- 
grance, speaking  to  students  of  his  aim  in  life,  would  say,  "  I  have  but  one 
passion,  —  Christ,  only  Christ."  In  Martensen's  correspondence  with 
Dorner  is  to  be  found  a  suggestive  sketch  of  the  supreme  position  which 
the  idea  of  imitation  of  Christ  may  hold  in  Christian  ethics:  "I  am 
working  over  anew  this  winter  my  lecture  on  ethics,  and  I  am  seeking 
to  carry  out  more  definitely  the  idea  of  the  imitation  of  Christ,  as  the 
middle  point  of  Christian  ethics.  The  kingdom  of  God  as  the  highest 
good  finds  its  central  realization  in  the  imitation  of  Christ"  {Briefwechsel^ 
B.  i.  ss.  215  f.). 


FORXS    IN   WHICH   THE   IDEAL   IS    REALIZED  223 

This  general  account  of  the  principle  of  virtue  in  the 
Christian  consciousness  admits,  however,  of  closer  defini- 
tion. In  the  Christianity  of  the  apostles  two  words  are  of 
so  frequent  occurrence  that  they  may  be  taken  as  key- 
notes of  the  primitive  Christian  consciousness,  —  the  words 
faith  and  love.  Of  these  two,  love  is  the  last  word  of  apos- 
tolic Christianity.  Not  only  is  it  the  last  word  of  the 
apostolic  teaching,  as  it  fell  from  the  lips  of  St.  John 
towards  the  close  of  the  first  century,  after  the  other 
apostles  had  finished  their  work  and  passed  from  earth, 
but  it  was  also  the  final  word  even  of  the  great  apostle 
of  faith :  "  But  now  abideth  faith,  hope,  love,  these  three ; 
and  the  greatest  of  these  is  love."  ^  There  is  in  the  New 
Testament  no  other  word  so  constantly  used,  so  common 
to  all  the  disciples,  so  expressive  of  the  spirit  of  the  ethics 
of  the  Master,  as  the  word  which  was  made  the  greatest 
in  St.  Paul's  epistle,  and  which  is  repeated,  like  the  key- 
note of  a  song,  in  the  epistles  of  St.  John. 

We  may  find  in  love,  therefore,  the  central  and  essential 
principle  of  the  moral  consciousness  of  apostolic  Chris- 
tianity. Love  is  the  primal  form  of  virtue  in  Christianity. 
Love  is  virtue  in  its  immediate  manifestation  among  men.^ 

What,  then,  is  the  relation  of  that  other  apostolic  word 
faith  to  love  ?  Is  the  virtuous  principle  in  the  Christian 
consciousness  a  double  principle,  faith  and  love  ?  Or  what 
is  the  relation  between  the  two  ? 

The  distinction  which  has  been  happily  made  in  theology 
between  the  material  and  the  formal  princijole  of  the  Prot- 
estant reformation  will  prove  equally  helpful  in  the  field 
of  ethics.  Faith  was  said  to  be  the  material,  and  the 
Scriptures  the  formal  principle  of  the  reformation.  In 
ethics  we  may  say  that  love  is  the  material,  and  faith  the 
formal  principle  of  Christian  virtue.  The  Christian  char- 
acter is  formed  by  faith  ;  it  lives  in  love.  It  is  constituted 
what  it  is  through  faith,  but  it  consists  in  love.  Or,  we 
might  say,  love,  which  is  the  essential  Christian  character, 

1 1  Cor.  xiii.  13. 

2  Love  is  not  a  form  assumed  by  this  principle  for  its  manifestation,  but 
the  principle  of  virtue  in  its  immediate  revelation  of  itself. 


224  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

in  its  receptive  and  formative  principle,  is  trust ;  and  faith, 
which  is  constitutive  of  Christian  character,  in  its  positive 
and  active  power  becomes  love.^  Faith  passes  into  love 
which  abides.  And  love  remains  love  only  as  it  always 
trusts.  The  two  belong  together,  therefore,  as  condition 
and  completion  of  the  same  virtue ;  as  the  formal  cause 
and  material  principle  of  the  same  character.  Faith  is  the 
finiteness,  the  dependence  of  love.  Love  is  the  indepen- 
dence, the  in  finite  11  ess  of  faith. 

The  English  reformers  and  Puritans  stoutly  maintained  that  love  is 
:not  "the  life  and  soul,"  "the  inward  and  essential  form,"  of  faith:  so 
John  Ball  (A  Treatise  of  Faith,  London,  1637,  p.  40).  The  position  taken 
above,  that  faith  rather  is  the  form  of  love  (that  in  which  love  is  begun 
and  constituted),  agrees  with  the  Protestant  contention  concerning  the 
priority  of  faith,  while  it  avoids  the  error  (into  which  Ball  fell)  of  separat- 
ing these  two,  as  though  one  were  an  external  instrument  to  the  other. 

The  further  question  has  been  asked,  whether  faith  is  to 
be  deemed  a  virtuous  act,  and  if  virtuous,  what  is  the  place 
which  faith  may  hold  in  the  hierarchy  of  the  virtues? 
If  love  takes  the  first  place,  shall  faith  follow  in  the  second 
place  ? 

A  little  discrimination  will  relieve  the  confusion  in 
which  the  moral  standing  of  faith  sometimes  seems  to  be 
left  in  Christian  thought.  All  moral  action  has  character 
as  virtuous  or  vicious ;  and  faith,  as  we  have  seen,  is  not 
a  mere  passive  state,  not  an  animal  sentiency,  but  personal 
receptivity  ;  and  as  such  it  involves  willing,  and  is  moral 
action.  In  this  sense  it  is  untrue  to  say  that  we  have 
nothing  to  do  in  being  saved  by  grace,  or  that  faith  has 
no  merit.  For  faith  has  character,  and  is  good,  so  far  as 
it  goes.  In  the  biblical  instances  it  was  imputed  to  men 
for  righteousness,  and  nothing  which  is  morally  indifferent 
can  be  so  imputed.  A  thing  absolutely  unmoral  cannot 
enter  into  a  moral  order  and  be  counted.  Neither  could 
a  new  righteousness  proceed  from  faith,  if  there  was  no 
moral  beginning  at  least  of  right  life  in  faith. 

This  is  not,  however,  to  assert  that  faith  has  any  saving 
.iiierit.     The  virtuous  character  of  faith  as  a  moral  act  is 

1  Gal.  V.  6. 


rOEMS   IN   WHICH   THE   IDEAL   IS   EEALIZED  225 

one  thing ;  what  that  act  can  accomplish  is  quite  a  differ- 
ent matter.  The  condition  of  salvation  presented  in 
the  gospel  is  twofold ;  there  is  a  hand  of  faith  stretched 
forth,  and  also  an  Object  to  be  grasped  by  faith.  The 
new  moral  life,  the  salvation  which  is  to  be  gained,  Avill 
consist  in  the  real  union  of  faith  and  its  Object,  not  in 
any  virtue  of  the  faith  apart  from  its  Object.  When  it  is 
said  that  faith  has  no  merit  to  win  salvation,  it  is  not 
denied  that  it  has  good  character  as  our  moral  act,  but  it 
is  simply  affirmed  that  faith  is  not  of  itself  productive  of 
the  good  of  forgiveness  and  new  life  which  it  receives ; 
it  is  a  receptive,  and  not  a  productive  virtue.  It  is  mor- 
ally acceptive  of  Christ's  righteousness,  but  not  causative 
of  God's  justification.  For  it  is  by  grace  that  we  have 
been  saved  through  faith.^ 

There  is  still  another  sense  in  which  faith  may  be  said 
to  have  virtue.  Leading  to  love,  it  maj^  also  become  itself 
a  further  manifestation  of  love.  The  pure  spring  of  love, 
it  may  floAv  through  love  with  deepening  power.  The 
more  one  loves,  the  more  also  he  will  trust.  Yet  the 
virtuousness  of  faith  is  its  love ;  and  in  general,  only  as 
faith  has  love  and  expresses  love  can  it  be  regarded  as  a 
virtue.  The  believing  act,  as  a  loving  act,  is  good.  In 
the  last  analysis  the  virtuousness  of  faith  may  be  reduced 
to  the  incipient  love  which  is  in  it.  As  an  act  of  trust,  — 
a  giving  of  personal  confidence,  —  it  implies  an  outgoing 
of  self  towards  another,  which  is  love  in  the  moral  germ 
at  least  of  it. 

In  the  infinite  One,  who  is  self-dependent,  faith  disap- 
pears, and  is  not  to  be  contemplated  as  among  the  perfec- 
tions of  the  Godhead,  for  the  Divine  love  in  its  infinite 
wisdom  has  no  need  of  faith  ;  —  unless,  indeed,  it  may  be 
thought  that  the  love  of  God  to  Christ,  the  Son  of  his  love, 
involved  a  divine  trust  in  him,  and  that  through  the  rela- 
tion of  the  Father  to  the  Son,  and  in  God's  free  justifica- 
tion of  Christ's  friends,  before  they  are  personally  worthy 
of  it,  faith  may  be  said  to  become  also  an  outgoing  and 
manifestation  of  the  divine  perfection.     Since  faith  is  not 

lEph.  ii.5. 


226  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

a  necessary  quality  of  the  absolute  good,  a  moral  excellence 
of  God,  obviously  it  cannot  be  regarded  as  itself  the  ma- 
terial principle  of  virtue ;  for  the  essence  of  virtue  is  eter- 
nal. Faith  is  virtuous  only  relatively,  and  in  finite,  de- 
pendent beings. 

Faith,  while  thus  virtuous,  is  not,  however,  to  be  placed 
by  itself  as  a  specific  virtue  among  the  many  separate  vir- 
tues. It  exists  rather  before  and  through  all  the  Christian 
virtues  as  their  condition  and  necessary  Christian  form. 
It  might  be  called,  in  its  first  exercise,  the  Christian  pre- 
existence  of  the  virtues.  They  are  potentially  involved 
in  it;  it  will  accompany  and  give  Christian  character  to 
them  all. 

For  our  classification  of  the  virtues  we  start,  accordingly, 
from  the  Christian  personality  which  possesses  the  virtu- 
ous quality,  love,  and  which  lives  through  faith,  its  condi- 
tional element,  or  formal  as  distinguished  from  material 
principle.  The  Christian  virtues  will  be  the  special  man- 
ifestations, in  the  life  of  faith,  of  this  personal  Christian 
love,  and  their  possible  combinations  and  permutations. 

The  virtues  may  be  primarily  distinguished  as  we  discern 
the  three  essential  elements  in  which  love  consists.  For 
love  contains  in  its  unity  a  trinity  of  virtue.  It  com- 
preliends  within  itself  the  three  following  distinctions: 
moral  self-affirmation,  self-impartation,  and  self-existence 
in  others.  Love  affirms  its  own  worthiness,  imparts  to 
others  its  good,  and  finds  its  life  again  in  the  well-being  of 
others. 

1.    Love  is  self-affirmation. 

A  certain  respect  for  self,  and  declaration  of  the  worth 
of  self,  enters  as  a  primal  element  into  all  true  love.  The 
giver  must  have  respect  for  his  gift,  or  giving  would  lose 
all  character.  In  every  good  gift  there  is  implied  a  sense 
of  the  worthiness  or  fitness  of  the  gift.  To  love  worthily 
is  at  the  same  time  to  be  worthy  of  love.  He  is  not  a  true 
lover  who  in  his  love  does  not  keep  his  honor,  who  is  not 
himself  made  pure  by  virtue  of  his  love.  Any  true  affec- 
tion contains  in  it  this  element  of  self-respect.  If  the  gift 
which  love  makes  when  it  offers  itself,  is  not  by  the  ver}^ 


FORMS   IN   WHICH  THE  IDEAL  IS   REALIZED  227 

offering  of  it  declared  to  be  something  worthy  of  accep- 
tance, the  love  is  no  true  offering.  Love  withou\;  implicit 
and  constant  maintenance  of  itself  as  worthy  of  accept- 
ance would  cease  to  be  love,  and  become  lust.  Holiness 
is  therefore  involved  in  love  as  its  essential  respect  to 
itself.  It  is  the  honor  of  love.  Righteousness  is  not, 
therefore,  an  independent  excellence  to  be  contrasted 
with,  or  even  put  in  opposition  to,  benevolence ;  it  is 
essential  part  of  love.  Love  without  this  assertion  of  its 
own  worthiness,  love  without  righteousness,  would  not  be 
love.  We  cannot  conceive  of  a  true  human  love  as  exist- 
ing^ and  continuing  without  this  affirmation  of  its  own 
worthiness  as  a  gift  of  self  to  another ;  still  less  are  we 
able  to  conceive  of  an  infinite  love  without  the  indwelling 
energy  of  an  eternal  self-affirmation.  The  heavenly  Father 
is  the  Holy  Father.^  Righteousness  is  the  eternal  genu- 
ineness of  the  Divine  love.  Infinite  love  is  essentially  also 
absolute  justice. 

2.   Love  is  self-impartation. 

It  is  of  the  nature  of  love  to  give,  and  to  give  of  self. 
The  self-giving,  which  is  inward  law  of  love,  is  not  to  be 
satisfied  by  the  bestowal  of  outvv^ard  things.  These  may 
be  used  as  expressions  of  its  benevolence,  or  as  accompani- 
ments of  its  exercise.  But  the  inward  and  essential  nature 
of  love  is  to  give  of  self  to  the  utmost.  Love  does  not 
fill  up  its  measure  of  devotion  until  the  lover  has  given 
not  merely  all  that  he  has,  but  all  that  he  is.  Self-impar- 
tation is  a  first  necessity  of  love.  Such  is  the  law  of  love 
as  we  find  it  in  its  human  revelations.  In  all  true  affec- 
tions there  is  a  certain  communication  of  personality.  We 
give  in  our  friendships  not  merely  of  our  substance,  but 
of  ourselves  to  others.  The  difference  between  the  rela- 
tion of  a  patron  to  a  client,  and  the  relation  of  friend  to 
friend,  consists  precisely  in  this,  that  in  the  former  only 
gifts  are  bestowed,  while  in  the  latter  something  of  the 
personal  life  is  shared.  We  give  our  hearts  in  our  friend- 
ships. In  noble  comradeships  men  will  give  their  lives 
together.     And  love,  as  it  is  manifested  in  its  purest  and 

1  John  xvii.  11. 


228  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

fullest  measure  in  the  family  life,  is  in  all  things  a  mutual 
self-impartation ;  —  the  members  of  the  family  not  only 
dwell  under  one  roof,  but  in  all  possible  ways  they  live  as 
members  one  of  another.  Married  love  rests  on  a  cove- 
nant of  self-giving,  and  is  continued  only  through  mutual 
self-impartation. 

For  still  stronger  reason,  therefore,  must  we  deem  self- 
impartation  even  to  the  uttermost  to  be  the  inward  law  of 
perfect  and  infinite  Love.  It  is  the  nature  of  God  as  love 
to  give  Himself  to  the  creation.  Should  the  Divine  benev- 
olence be  conceived  as  exhausted  or  stayed  in  its  giving 
without  any  self-communication  of  God  to  his  creation, 
before  the  utmost  possible  impartation  of  the  Divine  image 
and  life  to  the  creation,  God's  love  would  thereby  be  ren- 
dered finite  and  imperfect.  Since  self-bestowal  is  essential 
nature  of  love  even  within  our  human  limitations,  and 
since  God  is  love,  the  glory  of  God  will  be  shown  in  his 
self-impartation  to  something  other  than  Himself;  and 
such  self-giving  of  God's  love  will  not  cease  nor  fall  short 
until  the  largest  possible  communication  of  the  divine  has 
been  bestowed. 

Is  there  any  limit  to  the  self-impartation  of  love  ?  The 
material  and  physical  conditions  of  self-communication  set 
limits  to  the  outgoings  of  our  human  affections.  To  ignore 
these  limitations  would  be  to  fly  against  nature.  But  we 
cannot,  with  the  Greek  Platonists,  conceive  the  Divine 
love  to  be  similarly  bound  by  any  physical  necessity,  with- 
out also  supposing  matter  to  be  eternal  as  God,  and  imagin- 
ing a  dark,  impassible  physical  background  of  the  moral 
nature  of  God.  If  there  is  a  limit  to  be  conceived  in  the 
self-impartation  of  an  infinite  love  to  a  finite  object,  that 
limit  will  be  ethical,  not  physical.^ 

Tlie  bound  of  divine  benevolence  in  the  creation  is  not 
to  be  found  in  some  uncreated  nature  of  matter  by  which 
the  omnipotence  of  love  itself  would  be  held  in  abeyance 
and  subjected  to  external  necessity;  it  is  to  be  found,  if 

1  A  metaphysical  limitation  in  the  communication  of  the  infinite  to  the 
finite  may  indeed  be  posited ;  but,  if  thought  out,  it  would  run  back  into  the 
ethical  reason  for  any  finite  creation,  so  that  the  ultimate  limitation  would 
still  be  ethically  determined. 


FOEMS   IX    WHICH    THE   IDEAL   IS    REALIZED  229 

anywhere,  in  the  love  itself,  and  will  be  a  purely  ethical 
limitation. 

This  ethical  limit  of  self-impartation  is  apparent  in  any 
true  human  affection,  and  Ls  set  by  the  primal  moral  quality 
of  love  which  has  just  been  distinguished  —  its  self-affirma- 
tion. Love  wills  to  impart  itself  up  to  the  limit  of  the 
maintenance  of  its  own  worth  of  being,  but  no  further. 
Love  cannot  so  impart  itself  as  at  the  same  time  to  destroy 
itself.  Love  in  self-bestowal  cannot  become  suicidal.  If 
the  impulse  of  giving  inherent  in  any  human  love  should 
go  beyond  the  limit  of  respect  to  its  own  being  and  worth, 
the  affection  would  at  once  lower  itself  into  lawless  pas- 
sion ;  love  would  so  overreach  itself  as  to  cease  to  be  good. 
For  example,  nothing  is  more  self-sacrificial  than  a  mother's 
love.  Yet  a  mother  wdro  should  so  love  her  child  as  to  let 
the  purity  and  hol}^  sweetness  of  her  affection  be  lost  in  some 
endeavor  to  serve  or  to  secure  the  happiness  of  the  child, 
would  thereby  forfeit  the  ver}^  truth  and  powder  of  her  love. 
The  ethical  limit  of  self-impartation  is  always  to  be  found 
in  the  ethical  necessity  of  self-affirmation ;  the  benevolence 
of  love  has  its  moral  bounds  in  the  holiness  of  love. 

Applying  this  same  ethical  limit  to  our  conception  of 
the  Infinite  One  and  the  absolute  Love,  we  reason  that 
God  could  not  morally  have  so  imparted  His  own  being  to 
the  creation  as  to  cease  Himself  to  be  God  over  it.  To 
surrender  His  sovereignty  would  be  to  deny  His  love. 
Self-imparting  love  will  create  man  in  the  image  of  God, 
but  it  wall  not  make  man  as  God.  Of  His  infinitely  blessed 
life  God  wall  impart  to  the  creation  intelligence,  moral 
capacity,  all  the  good  that  is  implied  in  self-conscious  and 
free  existence.  Yet  God,  however  immanent  in  man's 
spirit,  must  remain  the  transcendent  One  ;  and  the  mpral 
creation,  in  its  fullest  reception  of  the  Divine,  will  continue 
to  be  a  dependent  creation,  having  its  life  from  God,  and 
not  in  itself,  because  God  is  love,  and  perfect  love  cannot 
deny  itself.  Pantheism  is  thus  excluded  by  an  ethical 
necessity.  An  ever  deepening  immanence,  yet  always  some 
transcendence  of  God,  is  ethically  secured  in  the  concep- 
tion of  God  as  perfect  love. 


230  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

3.  The  tliircl  element  in  the  trinity  of  love  is  self-iincling 
in  another,  the  living  in  another's  life. 

Vicariousness  helongs  also  to  the  integral  nature  of  love. 
It  is  love's  power  of  putting  self  through  sympathy  into 
another's  life,  of  taking  another  into  its  own  heart.  By 
our  sympathetic  affections  we  live  otliers'  lives,  and  are 
made  happy  or  suffer  pain  through  our  oneness  with  them. 
This  sympathetic  faculty  of  love  gives  it  interpretative 
power ;  by  its  vicariousness  it  can  enter  into  alien  moods, 
make  itself  at  home  in  strange  experiences,  become  one  in 
spirit  with  the  souls  of  others.  This  third  element  of  the 
trinity  of  love  may  be  said  to  proceed  from  the  other  two ; 
for  the  love  which  affirms  itself,  and  the  love  which  imparts 
itself,  receive  their  completion  in  the  love  which  finds  itself 
in  another,  and  brings  that  other  into  its  own  life.  So 
every  pure  human  affection  is  at  once  a  losing  and  a  find- 
ing of  self  in  the  friendship  which  is  cherished,  or  the 
home  which  is  blessed. 

This  vicarious  power  of  love  attains  its  ideal  complete- 
ness in  the  Christian  revelation  of  God.  The  Father 
enters  into  the  life  of  humanity  in  the  Word  that  was 
made  flesh.  God  lives  in  most  intimate  sympathy  with 
man  through  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  eternal  Love,  which  in 
the  person  of  the  Son  lost  its  life  in  the  world,  may  be 
said  to  find  its  life  again  in  the  redeemed  humanity  which 
it  takes  to  itself  and  glorifies.  Through  the  vicarious 
power  of  His  love,  God  was  in  Christ  reconciling  the  world 
unto  Himself,  and  our  life  is  hid  with  Christ  in  God. 

Through  this  vicarious  power  of  sympathy  with  the  crea- 
tion, which  is  inherent  in  love,  the  possibility  of  reconcili- 
ation, and  final  harmony  of  the  life  of  a  sinful  humanity 
with  the  life  of  God,  is  rendered  conceivable.  The  possi- 
bility of  atonement  is  involved  in  the  creation  from  the 
beginning,  since  love  from  eternity  is  vicarious  as  well  as 
self-imparting,  a  love  that  wills  to  live  in,  and,  if  need  be, 
to  suffer  with,  the  creation  which  as  benevolence  it  calls 
forth. 

A  clear  and  full  conception  of  this  moral  trinity  of  love  contains  great 
consequences  for  theology.     And  Christian  ethics  has  a  rich  service  still 


rOEMS    IX    ^VHICH   THE   IDEAL    IS    REALIZED  231 

to  render  to  Christian  theology  in  the  purification  and  enrichm?nt  of  its 
idea  of  God.  Physical  necessities  and  limitations,  —  that  fathomless 
background  which  lay  darkly  behind  the  Platonic  conception  of  tlie  Good, 
—  as  well  as  the  errors  in  the  truth  of  Spinozism  and  modern  pantheism, 
can  be  removed  only  by  a  thorough  ethicizing,  in  the  light  of  the  Christian 
consciousness,  of  the  whole  philosophical  conception  of  God. 

Our  present  task  forbids  our  working  out  these  ethical 
suggestions  farther  along  theological  lines.  Our  immedi- 
ate concern  with  this  analysis  of  love  into  its  three  primary 
elements,  lies  in  the  help  which  we  may  derive  from  it  in 
the  further  determination  of  human  virtues.  From  this 
supreme  ethical  principle  of  love,  as  it  is  to  be  studied  in 
the  Christian  consciousness  of  life,  we  have  obtained  a 
threefold  division  of  the  virtues ;  viz.  righteousness  (holi- 
ness), benevolence,  and  sympathy  (altruistic  interest  in 
others).^ 

This  is  the  most  general  category  of  the  virtues  which 
have  their  unity  in  love.  These  are  the  three  primary 
colors  of  love.  From  each  one  of  these  three,  in  secondary 
combination  with  the  others,  further  specific  virtues  may 
be  derived ;  the  possible  shadings  and  harmonies  of  these 
primary  colors  of  virtue  are  various  as  the  hues  of  the 
solar  spectrum.  Thus,  from  the  primary  virtue  of  self- 
affirmation  or  self-respect,  combined  with  variant  degrees 
of  the  other  elements,  may  be  derived  that  whole  class  of 
virtues  which  moralists  treat  of  under  the  category  of  the 
self-regarding  virtues.  And  likewise  from  each  of  the  other 
primary  principles,  if  we  blend  the  other  two  as  second- 
ary with  it,  many  and  diversified  virtues  may  be  composed. 
The  element  of  love,  which  in  each  instance  is  taken  as 
primary,  will  determine  the  positive  virtue,  while  the  other 
two  elements  will  yield  its  modifications  and  qualifications. 
We  do  not  care,  however,  at  this  point  to  pursue  further 
this  more  specific  deduction  of  the  virtues,  as  repetition 
may  be  avoided  by  noticing  in  the  chapter  concerning 
duties  discriminations  which  might  be  drawn  as  we  have 
just  indicated. 

1  Righteousness  as  subjective  regard  for  our  own  moral  being,  is  holiness; 
as  objective  regard  for  the  persons  of  others,  it  becomes  justice. 


232  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

In  the  study  of  living  species  two  courses  of  investiga- 
tion lie  open  to  science.  We  may  take  some  typical  form, 
as  we  find  it  in  existence,  and  determine  its  anatomy.  We 
may  find  the  idea  of  the  type  in  some  mature  and  perfect 
specimen  of  it.  Another  way  also  of  studying  specific 
forms  lies  open,  within  certain  limits,  to  biologists.  They 
may  proceed  through  embryological  researches.  They  may 
seek  to  trace  the  genetic  development  of  the  life  which  in 
some  finished  form  of  it  is  presented  to  their  investiga- 
tion ;  they  may  endeavor  by  retracing,  so  far  as  they  may, 
the  processes  of  its  formation  and  growth,  to  understand 
its  origin. 

Thus  far  we  have  been  determining  the  Christian  prin- 
ciple of  virtue  in  its  typical  form  by  analysis  of  the 
Christian  moral  consciousness.  We  have  found  love  in 
its  trinity  to  be  the  idea  of  the  Christian  type  of  virtue. 
We  have  reached  this  conclusion  by  observation  and  in- 
terpretation of  the  fully  developed  Christian  moral  con- 
sciousness. 

II.  We  have  now  to  begin  our  inquiry  over  again  from 
an  opposite  quarter,  and  to  test  the  result  of  our  analysis 
by  what  may  be  designated  as  an  embryological,  or  genetic, 
investigation  into  the  nature  of  Christian  virtue.  We 
shall  have  to  consider  in  this  connection  the  origin,  pro- 
cess of  formation,  and  stages  of  growth  of  the  Christian 
principle  of  virtue. 

1.    The  Genesis  of  Christian  Virtue. 

The  Christian  personality  comes  to  its  birth  in  a  hu- 
manity which  has  Christ  in  it.  The  life  of  the  individ- 
ual Christian  man  proceeds  from  a  human  life  Avhich  has 
received  Christ,  and  already  is  in  part  become  Christian. 
In  the  generation  of  the  Christian  personality  —  the  new 
birth  of  soul  —  traces  and  signs  of  all  the  preceding  his- 
tory of  man's  spirit  may  be  discerned  ;  all  the  ages  may 
repeat  their  history  of  promise,  law,  covenant,  prophecy, 
in  the  coming  of  a  soul  into  Christian  self-consciousness ; 
—  as  the  history  of  the  species  is  summed  up  in  the  forma- 
tion and  birth  of  every  individual  man.  But  however 
clearly  or  distinctly  the  earlier  stadia  of  man's  life  may  be 


FORMS   IN   WHICH   THE   IDEAL   IS   REALIZED  233 

traced  in  the  process  of  spiritual  regeneration  through 
which  one  is  born  into  the  kingdom  of  God,  the  chief  and 
distinctive  fact  is  that  every  Christian  man  is  born  into  a 
humanity  which  already  has  Christ  in  it,  and  is  become 
a  different  humanity  because  it  has  Christ  in  it.  In  other 
words,  the  new  Christian  morality  does  not  start  from 
a  Christless  ground  of  humanity.  It  proceeds  from  an 
eternal  redemption  in  Christ.^  The  individual  Christian 
is  not  the  first-born  child  of  God  ;  Christ  is  the  first-fruits ; 
every  man  of  us  is  a  member  of  a  human  race  which  has 
the  Christ  as  its  head,  which  has  not  been  left  Christless 
in  God's  eternal  purpose.  We  are  born  into  a  lost  race 
which  has  been  found  by  God  in  Christ.  Our  human 
nature,  as  a  nature,  is  redeemed  in  Christ.  So  in  Christ 
shall  all  be  made  alive.^  Human  nature  exists  not  merely 
under  the  curse  and  in  its  sins,  but  in  the  Clirist,  —  inher- 
iting the  promise,  and  having  God  with  it  and  for  it.^  We 
discover,  then,  in  this  humanity  in  which  Christ  is,  a  nat- 
ural ground  already  prepared  for  the  birth  and  the  growth 
of  the  individual  Christian  and  his  personal  virtue.  A 
human  regeneration  has  already  been  potentially  wrought 
in  Christ,  of  which  infant  baptism  has  become  in  the 
Church  the  sign  and  the  seal.  A  new  life  has  been  opened 
at  the  heart  of  our  humanity,  a  new  obedience  wrought 
into  the  will  of  man,  a  new  consecration  and  hope  im- 
parted to  the  spirit  of  man  through  Christ  and  the  forces 
of  his  continuous  life  in  humanity.  This  truth  of  the 
Christ  once  incarnate  in  humanity,  and,  always  spiritually 
present  in  the  continuous  life  of  man,  forms  the  ethical. 
Christian  ground  of  society.  And  from  this  Christian 
social  condition  the  work  of  the  Spirit  proceeds  in  the 
birth  of  each  individual  into  Christian  manhood. 

It  is  true  in  some  sense  that  humanity  inherits  the  good 
of  all  true  sacrificial  lives.  Their  virtue  has  entered  into 
and  enriched  the  blood  of  the  race.  We  are  baptized  into 
their  spirit.  The  social  whole,  into  which  the  individual 
comes  at  his  birth,  is  the  sum-total  of  the  redemptive  vir- 
tues, as  well  as  destructive  sins,  of    all  past  generations. 

1  Eph.  iii.  11.  2  1  Cor.  xv.  22.  3  See  above,  p.  190. 


23-i  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

Every  pure  life  purifies  tiie  social  atmosphere  which  the 
new-born  child  shall  breathe.  Men's  virtues  and  vices  live 
on  in  the  ethical  life  of  the  race.  Christ's  life  may  thus 
be  conceived  of  as  a  continuous  life  under  the  same  law 
of  spiritual  descent  and  influence.  It  affords  the  most 
significant  illustration  of  the  law  of  human  solidarity. 
Under  this  law  the  Christian  self-consciousness  of  virtue 
in  each  individual  instance  of  it  has  its  origfin  in  a  social 
life  which  already  to  some  extent  has  been  Christianized. 
Ours  is  an  inheritance  not  only  of  a  nature  partly  dehuman- 
ized by  ancestral  sins,  but  also  possessing  Christ's  virtue, 
and  to  some  extent  already  ethicized  and  spiritualized  by 
the  indwelling  of  Christ  and  his  renewing  grace.  We 
often  ma}^  notice  in  the  processes  of  regeneration,  and  par- 
ticularly just  before  the  birth  of  a  soul  into  clear  Christian 
self-consciousness,  the  signs  of  this  double  inheritance  — 
the  corruptive  and  the  redemptive,  the  Adamic  and  the 
Christian.  In  our  partly  Christianized  humanity  the  indi- 
vidual is  born  to  a  moral  conflict.  Two  possible  lives  are 
met  in  the  cradle  of  the  Christian  child.  Moral  conflict 
is  the  birthright  which  a  humanity,  once  lost  in  sin  and 
now  found  in  Christ,  gives  to  every  child ;  and  with  the 
necessity  of  conflict  the  possibility  also  either  of  personal 
defeat  or  victory.  In  proportion  to  the  advance  of  Chris- 
tian virtue  which  a  community  has  already  gained,  in  pro- 
portion to  the  degree  in  which  society  or  the  home  has 
already  been  Christianized,  will  be  the  facility  with  which 
the  child  may  come  into  the  new  life  of  the  Christ,  and  the 
naturalness  of  its  personal  freedom  from  the  sin  of  the 
world.  So  far  as  the  human,  social  ground  of  individual 
existence  has  already  been  Christianized,  the  moral  prob- 
ability of  Christian  virtue  and  victory  for  the  child  Avill  be 
greater.  Christianity  is  eventually  to  come  in  the  blood 
of  the  race,  as  well  as  through  the  conversion  of  individ- 
ual souls.  Christian  ethics,  therefore,  will  be  deeply  and 
persistently  concerned  with  the  Christian  social  basis  of 
individual  life. 

2.    The  Process  of  the  Formation  of  Christian  Character. 

We  may  trace  to  some  extent  the  process  of  conversion 


FORMS    IN   WHICH   THE    IDEAL    IS    REALIZED  235 

by  which  a  Christian  character  is  made  possible.  This 
process  is  religious,  and  as  such  is  subject-matter  of  dog- 
matics ;  but  it  is  also  a  moral  change,  and  as  such  belongs 
to  Christian  ethics.  In  the  moral  aspect  of  it  certain  gen- 
eral characteristics  may  be  distinguished.  One  of  the 
earliest  is  the  gain  of  a  distinct  and  often  painful  sense 
of  the  moral  disharmony  of  our  nature.  There  is  awak- 
ened a  sense  of  sin,  and  sin  is  realized  as  personal  unwor- 
thiness  or  guilt.  In  this  consciousness  of  moral  division 
and  failure  there  is  involved  also  a  sense  of  personal  help- 
lessness, dependence  on  some  higher  Power  for  deliver- 
ance, and  the  desire,  above  all  things  else,  for  forgiveness 
and  restoration. 

Through  acceptance  of  the  gospel  and  personal  trust  in 
Christ,  the  moral  nature,  which  has  been  thus  aroused, 
receives  new  energy  and  springs  forward  to  hopeful  obedi- 
ence. A  new  heart  is  gained  for  duty  and  for  all  moral 
endeavor.  The  soul,  having  heard  and  obeyed  the  call  of 
the  true  Leader,  has  issued  a  declaration  of  spiritual  inde- 
pendence. The  battle,  the  lifelong  campaign  for  its  vir- 
tuous freedom,  is  by  no  means  fought  out;  a  prolonged 
revolutionary  war  of  the  soul  for  its  freedom  may  have  to 
follow ;  but  the  day  of  conversion  has  been  to  many  a  soul 
its  religious  emancipation,  —  a  new  era  of  liberty,  though 
of  liberty  to  be  won  and  maintained  through  arduous  moral 
conflict,  dates  from  that  hour  of  its  declaration  of  Christian 
independence. 

With  this  inward  birth  into  the  Christian  life  there  is 
given  also  the  assurance  of  ultimate  moral  victory  and 
harmony.  The  new  motive  and  ^^rinciple  of  life  becomes, 
in  the  experience  of  the  Christian  man,  its  own  heavenly 
witness.  It  brings  in  itself  the  testimony  of  the  Spirit 
from  which  it  proceeds,  —  the  sense  of  forgiven  sin,  of 
renewed  sonship,  and  the  hope  of  final  attainment  of  the 
ideal  life  in  union  with  the  Spirit  of  God. 

3.    The  Growth  of  the  New  Life. 

After  the  new  birth,  or  awakening  into  Christian  con- 
sciousness, the  new  principle  of  life  will  seek  to  realize 
itself  in  all  the  activities,  relations,  and  spheres  of  per- 


236  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

sonal  life.  The  true  Christian  will  not  be  content  to 
remain  a  Christian  in  general,  but  he  will  strive  to  become 
a  Christian  in  the  particulars  of  his  daily  life.  And  as  the 
moral  personality  has  been  inwardly  drawn  to  Christ  as 
its  living  centre  and  adoration,  so  will  it  outwardly  grow 
more  conformable  to  his  likeness.  This  growth  in  the  new 
life  will  require  also  a  process  of  purification  from  ele- 
ments alien  to  the  divine  principle  of  it,  —  that  continuous 
repentance  which  is  the  casting  off  of  the  sinful  nature  in 
all  its  habits  and  dispositions,  and  which  must  character- 
ize Christian  experience  until  that  which  is  perfect  is 
come. 

Moreover,  the  moral  realization  of  the  life  of  Christ  in 
the  life  of  the  individual  believer  must  be  wrought  out  in 
relation  to  the  whole  ethical  condition  of  the  generation 
and  community  in  which  the  Christian  lives ;  the  indi- 
vidual conformity  to  Christ  will  find  both  restrictions  and 
helps,  both  limits  which  cannot  be  passed,  and  also  barri- 
ers to  be  removed,  in  the  general  moral  consciousness  of 
the  age.  The  Christian  man,  although  not  of  the  world,  is 
in  it ;  Peter  and  James  were  in  Jerusalem,  and  could  «ot 
altogether  forget  the  temple ;  and  Paul's  Christian  experi- 
ence shows  his  training  in  Rabbinical  habits  of  mind.  The 
social  conditions  and  general  intelligence  of  an  age  will 
modify  the  type  of  Christian  character  prevalent  in  it. 

From  this  brief  description  of  the  vital  processes  through 
which  the  Christian  consciousness  comes  to  the  birth,  and 
grows  toward  its  perfect  fruition,  we  may  discover  again 
what  is  the  material  principle  of  that  life.  Its  condition, 
its  formal  principle,  as  appears  plainly  from  the  account 
of  its  origin,  is  faith.  Trust  in  Christ  is  the  beginning  of 
the  gospel  in  the  soul.  But  love  quickly  emerges  as  its 
master  passion.  Repentance  and  faith  were  the  first  con- 
ditions of  personal  attachment  to  Jesus  ;  but  the  following 
him  in  personal  loyalty  was  discipleship.  So  that  when 
we  study  the  principle  of  Christian  virtue  in  its  origin, 
when  we  trace  it  from  its  beginnings  in  faith  to  its  full  self- 
consciousness  in  communion  with  Christ,  we  find  that  its 
ethical  character  is  love,  but  a  love  which  from  its  origin 


FORMS    IN    WHICH    THE   IDEAL    IS    REALIZED  237 

and  growth  receives  a  peculiarly  personal  and  intense 
warmth  and  devotion.  The  essential  principle  of  Chris- 
tian virtue  is  love,  yet  not  love  in  the  abstract,  not  love 
formally  conceived  and  philosophically  exercised,  not  love 
to  being  in  general,  but  love  of  being  as  all  its  worth  is 
summed  up  in  the  Person  of  Christ  and  his  reign, — love 
of  the  highest  good  as  presented  to  the  utmost  devotion 
of  human  hearts  in  the  revelation  of  God's  glory  in  Christ 
and  the  eternal  purpose  of  his  grace.  It  is  love  of  Love 
in  its  living  fulness  and  completion  in  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.  Consequently  the  principle  of  virtue  in  the  Chris- 
tian life,  by  reason  of  its  immediate  relation  to  Christ,  and 
through  him  with  all  the  redeemed,  becomes  love  in  its 
maximum  of  personal  intensity,  in  its  highest  energy  and 
purity.^ 

No  formal  definition  of  the  nature  of  virtue  is  given  in  the  Scriptures  ; 
yet  it  is  not  difficult  to  perceive  the  one  virtuous  quality  which  appears 
in  the  biblical  descriptions  of  the  virtues,  and  to  test  by  this  biblical 
principle  of  virtue  the  deductions  which  we  have  sought  to  make  from 
Christian  experience.  One  hardly  needs  other  help  than  his  concordance 
to  learn  how  love  runs  through  both  Testaments  as  a  common  quality  or 
unitary  principle  of  the  virtues,  "  Oh  how  love  I  thy  law"  (Ps.  cxix.97)  ; 
love  is  the  summary  of  the  law  (Matt.  xxii.  37-40;  1  John  ii.  7-11;  iv. 
7-13).  Other  measures  of  virtue  which  are  given  in  the  Scriptures,  such 
as  following  Christ,  the  Golden  Rule,  the  exhortation  to  holiness,  involve 
love  and  proceed  from  love. 

In  what  has  been  written  above  we  have  sought  to  determine  the  prin- 
ciple of  Christian  virtue  as  it  is  presented  in  its  concrete  reality  in  Chris- 
tian experience.  We  do  not,  however,  overlook  the  distinction  which  has 
been  made,  by  Prof.  Henry  B.  Smith,  between  the  statement  of  the  "  prin- 
ciple of  true  virtue  in  the  abstract,"  and  the  "statement  of  the  general 
principle  of  all  virtue  in  the  concrete"  (System  of  Christian  Theology, 
pp.  222  sq.).  But  the  former  belongs  properly  to  philosophical  ethics. 
The  question  in  what  does  true  virtue  consist,  has  had  a  peculiar  fascina- 
tion for  the  New  England  theologians.  Edwards  was  led  to  enter  upon 
the  discussion  of  the  nature  of  virtue  by  considerations  which  presented 
themselves  in  his  treatise  on  sin  ;  there  was  a  practical  religious  inter- 
est involved  in  determining  in  what  holiness  consists  ;  and  the  urgency 
of  the  pulpit  in  the  effort  to  convict  men  of  sin  has  had  much  to  do 
with  the  prominence  given  to  the  discussion  of  the  abstract  principle  of 
virtue  and  true  holiness  by  the  New  England  divines.  Edwards's  defini- 
tion of  virtue  was  this  :  "True  virtue  most  essentially  consists  in  benevo- 
lence to  Being  in  general.     Or  perhaps  to  speak  more  accurately,  it  is 

1  So  in  John  xvii.  22-26. 


238  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

that  consent,  propensity,  and  union  of  heart  to  Being  in  general,  that  is 
immediately  exercised  in  a  general  good  will"  {Works,  ii.  p.  2G2).  Ed- 
wards's theory  of  virtue  has  received  different  interpretations  and  has 
occasioned  much  discussion  in  the  later  schools  of  New  England  theology. 
Dr.  N.  W.  Taylor,  of  New  Haven,  adopted  a  modified  form  of  the  happi- 
ness theory  of  virtue  ;  he  made  virtue,  however,  to  consist  not  in  action 
productive  of  happiness,  but  in  the  happiness  found  in  benevolent  action. 
We  find  our  highest  pleasure  in  doing  good,  and  our  ultimate  motive  in 
doing  good  is  the  pleasure  we  find  in  it.  An  acute  and  profound  criticism 
of  all  the  happiness  theories  of  virtue,  and  also  the  ripest  fruit  of  the  dis- 
tinctive New  England  theological  conception  of  the  nature  of  virtue,  is  to 
be  found  in  the  System  of  Christian  Theology  of  the  late  Prof.  Henry 
B.  Smith,  which  was  published  from  his  lectures  after  his  death.  His 
own  statement  of  the  nature  of  true  virtue  in  its  general  form  is  :  "True 
Virtue  is  love  (the  highest  subjective  state)  of  the  highest  good  (the  great- 
■est  objective  well  being)."  In  the  most  definite  form  his  statement  is: 
"True  Virtue,  is  love  of  all  intelligent  and  sentient  beings,  according  to 
their  respective  capacities  for  good,  with  chief  and  ultimate  respect  to  the 
highest  good,  or  holiness  "  {opus  cit.  p.  223).  The  merit  of  this  definition, 
its  advance  beyond  Edwards,  consists  in  its  more  distinct  recognition  of 
virtue  as  love  to  being  not  merely  as  being,  but  in  its  relation  to  the  ends 
of  all  being,  love  to  each  being  in  his  place  in  the  system  as  a  whole. 
Proceeding  to  define  virtue  in  its  concrete  manifestation,  he  adds  :  "  The 
real  statement,  then,  of  the  fundamental  principle  of  all  true  virtue  would 
be,  that  it  consists  in  love  to  God,  and  to  all  other  beings  in  their  relation 
to,  and  as  parts  of,  the  divine  system  of  things"  (p.  231). 

This  origin  of  tlie  Christian  principle  of  virtue,  it  should 
be  further  noted,  excludes  from  it  a  false  sense  of  merit, 
which  was  never  absent  from  the  Grecian  doctrine  of  vir- 
tue. Humility,  which  has  no  proper  and  secure  place  in 
Aristotle's  or  Plato's  moral  philosophy,  but  which  surely 
should  have  some  deep  root  in  the  morality  of  finite  and 
sinful  beings,  is  a  natural  virtue  of  Christian  ethics,  and 
it  is  always  to  be  found  at  the  spiritual  source  of  the 
Christian  virtues. 

Merit  has  been  liappily  defined  by  Mr.  Stephen^  as  "the 
value  set  upon  virtue."  In  the  Christian  consciousness 
virtue  has  indeed  a  value  not  to  be  measured  in  terms 
of  any  other  good.  In  this  sense  it  has  merit.  But  the 
value  of  it  is  value  received  from  the  grace  in  which 
it  was  constituted.  It  has  to  the  Christian  mind  merit 
as  of  all  things  the  most  valuable  ;  yet  it  has  no  merit 
as  a  self-originated  good,  constituted  by  any  value-giving 

1  Science  of  Ethics,  p.  270. 


FORMS   IX    WHICH   THE   IDEAL   IS    REALIZED  239 

power  of  the  human  will.  It  is  the  merit  of  a  character 
freely  received  from  the  original  source  of  all  goodness 
and  love.  And  so  far  as  virtue  makes  increase  of  itself 
and  earns  additional  value  through  the  moral  conquests 
of  our  life,  its  merit  is  still  held  in  a  grateful  sense 
of  dependence  upon  the  Divine  Love  from  which  it  first 
proceeds,  and  by  the  Spirit  of  which  it  lives  and  triumphs. 
Hence  in  the  Christian  consciousness  is  given  the  double 
possibility  of  a  high  sense  of  the  merit  of  virtuous  conduct 
and  the  exclusion  also  of  the  demerit  of  pride.  In  some 
sense  this  would  hold  true  even  of  the  normal  development 
of  a  finite  moral  agent  whose  life  had  not  been  broken  by 
sin.  His  virtue  would  alwaj^s  be  a  dependent  virtue,  the 
merit  or  value  of  it  being  attributable  to  its  source  and 
power  in  the  original  and  infinite  love  of  God.  But  in  a 
special  and  enhanced  sense  is  it  true  of  an  abnormal  moral 
development  —  one  broken  and  rendered  powerless  by  sin 
—  that  its  virtue  must  always  be  to  the  praise  of  the  glory 
of  Him  who  hath  called  us  by  his  own  glory  and  virtue.^ 

The  merit  of  our  virtue  rests  on  God's  justifj^ng  love.  It 
is  not  the  human  faith,  but  the  Divine  Christ  who  has  given 
humanity  new  value  in  God's  sight.  Christian  virtue 
mediated  through  him,  and  kept  in  his  Spirit,  becomes  a 
thank-offering  to  God.  It  is  to  the  praise  of  God's  love  in 
Christ.  So  an  apostle,  not  den^dng  the  value  of  the  virtues, 
but  knowing  their  gracious  source  and  dependence,  said, 
"  He  that  glorieth,  let  him  glory  in  the  Lord."  ^ 

In  the  practical  precepts  of  the  New  Testament  many  virtues  are  com- 
mended, but  no  complete  description  of  all  the  virtues  possible  to  faith  is 
given  in  any  single  passage.  They  are  regarded  as  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit, 
and  are  described  in  general  as  "love,  joy,  peace,  longsuffering,  kind- 
ness, goodness,  faithfulness,  meekness,  temperance  :  against  such  there  is 
no  law"  (Gal.  v.  22-23).  A  rich  cluster  of  virtues  is  mentioned  as  the 
fruit  of  the  light :  "  Walk  as  children  of  light  (for  the  fruit  of  the  light  is 
in  all  goodness  and  righteousness  and  truth),  proving  what  is  well-pleas- 
ing unto  the  Lord"  (Eph.  v.  9-10).  Compare  also  the  process  of  moral 
addition  of  the  virtues  described  in  2.  Pet.  i.  5-8. 

The  virtues  are  seen  in  human  characters  only  as  they 
have  been  mixed  with  human  passions  and  sins.     Abso- 

1  2  Pet.  i.  3.  2  1  Cor.  i.  31. 


240  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

lately  pure  moral  colors  are  hard  to  find  on  earth.  A 
description  of  the  virtues  consequently  which  is  true  to 
life  Avill  take  account  of  the  faults  by  which  the  virtues 
are  adumbrated,  even  when  not  wholly  corrupted  by  vices. 
Some  of  the  virtues  are  peculiarly  exposed  to  such  loss  of 
light  in  our  impure  atmosphere.  Some  are  liable  to  evil 
reactions  under  exposure  to  the  influences  of  unfortunate 
temperaments  or  wrong  habits  of  feeling.  Humility,  for 
example,  easily  becomes  mixed  with  pride ;  when  one 
grows  conscious  of  his  humility  he  is  in  danger  of  becom- 
ing a  little  proud  of  it.  "  I  have  not  sinned  for  some 
time,"  said  a  believer  in  Christian  perfection  to  a  theologi- 
cal professor.  "  Then,"  replied  the  professor,  "  you  must 
be  proud  of  it."  "  Indeed  I  am,"  was  the  unwitting  con- 
fession of  the  lack  of  the  grace  of  humility.  A  very 
necessary  part  of  the  discipline  of  the  Christian  life  will 
consist  in  the  purification  of  the  virtues  which  one  already 
may  have  won,  so  easily  do  they  become  admixed  wdtli  the 
sin  of  the  world. 

The  virtues,  likewise,  in  this  educational  life,  may  be 
possessed  in  different  degrees  of  their  excellence,  and  the 
proportion  of  the  virtues  in  character  becomes  a  subject  for 
Christian  care  and  study.  It  has  been  said  by  Martensen, 
with  a  true  insight  into  the  processes  of  character,  that  we 
should  introduce  into  ethics  the  idea  of  the  disciple,  and 
have  regard  to  the  different  degrees  of  faith  and  love  in 
the  life  of  the  disciple.^ 

These  admixtures  and  degrees  of  virtue  we  shall  be  con- 
cerned with  in  our  discussion  of  Christian  duties :  the 
determination  of  the  principle  of  virtue  in  its  more  ideal 
forms  has  been  the  aim  of  this  chapter  ;  it  necessarily  pre- 
cedes the  more  practical  discrimination  of  the  concrete 
virtues,  which  it  is  the  duty  of  the  Christian  to  seek  for 
and  to  cherish. 

1  "Has  not  ethics  often  given  too  abstract  a  description  of  Christian  vir- 
tue, without  taking  enough  into  account  the  differences  of  degrees,  and  conse- 
quently also  the  pedagogy  of  Christ,  the  pedagogy  of  his  educative  love,  which 
is,  however,  of  the  highest  importance  for  life  ?  "— Brief wechsel,  B.  i.  s.  216. 


CHAPTER  V 

METHODS   OF   THE  PROGRESSIVE   REALIZATION   OF  THE 
CHRISTIAN   IDEAL 

We  have  no  experience  of  the  normal  development  of 
moral  life  in  a  sinless  world,  and  it  is  left  to  imagination 
to  conceive  the  methods  of  its  pure  and  happy  develop- 
ment. But  the  possibility  of  a  perfectly  normal  moral 
development  is  shown  by  the  growth  of  the  child  Jesus, 
and  his  favor  with  God  and  man.^  His  perfection,  how- 
ever, was  not  secured  under  the  most  friendly  conditions, 
amid  all  conceivable  ministries  of  divine  powers,  but  it  Avas 
won  from  a  conflict  with  the  evil  one,  in  a  close  and 
humiliating  union  with  a  human  nature  already  possessed 
by  the  powers  of  evil.  Jesus'  life  is  the  victory  of  the 
moral  in  the  most  adverse  circumstances,  —  the  final 
triumph  of  the  moral  over  the  utmost  evil  of  the  uni- 
verse. The  Son  of  man,  in  view  of  the  beginnings  of  his 
spiritual  conquests,  "  beheld  Satan  fallen  as  lightning  from 
heaven."  ^ 

Imitation  of  Christ  in  the  method  of  his  life  becomes, 
therefore,  the  possible  way  for  men  to  enter  into  the  per- 
fection of  their  Father  in  Heaven.^  The  open  way  of 
progress  towards  the  moral  ideal  for  our  world  is  the 
method  of  spiritual  resistance  to  temptation  and  overcom- 
ing evil  with  good,  by  which  the  Christ  was  made  perfect 
through  suffering.  The  ideal  ends  of  being  which  we  see 
from  afar,  cannot  be  grasped  at  once  by  any  eager  out- 
stretching of  men's  hands.  There  is  no  miracle  to  be 
wrought,  even  in  the  name  of  Christ,  for  the  instantaneous 
healing  of  the  sin   of  the  world.     Real  freedom  (as  St. 

1  Luke  ii.  40,  52.  2  Luke  x.  18.  3  Matt.  v.  48. 

241 


242  CHEISTIAN   ETHICS 

Augustine  would  call  perfect  holiness  and  righteousness) 
is  not  to  be  supernaturally  wrought,  but  it  is  to  be  gra- 
ciously achieved.  Human  redemption  is  a  process  of 
history. 

I.  The  method  in  which  the  Christian  Ideal  is  to  be 
made  real  on  earth,  is,  first,  a  method  of  conflict. 

In  the  sinless  life  of  Jesus,  spiritual  endeavor  was  neces- 
sary every  day  and  hour  in  order  that  he  might  not  fail  of 
the  truth  which  was  given  him  from  the  Father  to  do.  He 
rose  a  great  while  before  it  was  yet  dawn.  He  fasted  in 
the  wilderness.  He  met  the  tempter  with  concentration 
of  mind,  and  instantaneous  outgoing  of  will.  In  the 
presence  of  actual  energy  of  evil  the  life  of  the  Son  of 
man  became  a  conflict  with  the  evil  one. 

In  the  New  Testament  the  conception  is  clearly  gained 
that  evil  is  not  simply  a  privation  of  good,  or  a  negative 
want  of  godliness,  but  it  is  a  power  of  sinfulness,  a  destruc- 
tive energy  of  evil.  It  is  not  incidental  to  life  merely,  but 
the  evil  is  an  embodied  and  organized  opposition  to  God  in 
his  world  ;  —  there  is  a  kingdom  of  evil  —  all  evil  is  con- 
centrated and  its  utmost  energy  of  falsehood  put  forth  in 
the  evil  one.^  Jesus'  Messianic  working  —  his  cures  of 
many  infirmities,  his  casting  out  devils,  —  was  moral  j)art 
and  necessity  of  his  whole  ethical  contest  against  the 
kingdom  of  Satanic  might. 

Human  history  shows  the  solidarity  of  evil.  All  sins, 
however  they  may  tear  and  rend  each  other,  work  together 
against  the  good.  All  evil  things  gravitate  by  their  own 
malicious  affinities  into  one  mass  of  corruption.  The 
powers  of  evil  constitute  one  fearful  destructive  force 
against  the  constructive  power  of  love  in  God's  world. 
Between  these  two  kingdoms  of  the  good  and  the  evil,  there 
is  inevitable  and  irreconcilable  conflict.  The  battle-field 
marks  this  earth,  and  distinguishes  it  possibly  from  all  the 
stars  of  heaven.  Here  must  be  fought  through  the  war- 
fare between  passing  evil  and  the  eternal  love.  Our  earth 
—  is  it  in  this  necessity  of  conflict  alone  among  all  habi- 
table  worlds  ?  —  trembles  beneath   the    onset    of    Satanic 

1  Matt.  vi.  13  ;  John  viii.  44  ;  Matt.  xii.  24-28;  Luke  x.  18;  Col.  ii.l5,  etc. 


METHODS    OF   PEOGEESSIVE   REALIZATION  243 

powers  and  the  coming  of  heavenly  hosts.  For  our  race, 
and  for  every  individual  member  of  it  who  lives  long 
enough  to  hear  a  note  of  duty,  there  is  no  escape  from  this 
world's  necessity  of  conflict.  It  is  morally  inevitable  alike 
for  humanity  as  a  whole,  for  the  progress  of  the  nations, 
and  for  the  personal  achievement  of  virtue.  All  goodness 
returning  heavenward  from  this  earth  bears  upon  it  the 
marks  of  the  fire.  There  is  no  other  possible  purification 
for  it. 

When  Jesus  pronounced  the  blessing  upon  the  peace- 
makers, he  recognized  this  necessary  law  of  moral  conflict 
in  human  history,  for  he  did  not  say.  Blessed  are  the  peace- 
able ;  blessed  are  the  amiable ;  but  he  used  a  strong  and 
virile  verb,  —  the  same  Greek  verb  which  the  Scriptures 
afterwards  employ  to  characterize  Christ's  own  conflict  with 
the  evil  powers,  —  and  he  said,  "  Blessed  are  the  makers  of 
peace."  Peace  is  a  good  to  be  made  on  earth  —  it  can 
rarely  be  achieved  save  through  conflict,  —  a  struggle 
with  one's  self,  if  not  with  others.  The  moral  warrior 
may  make  peace  ;  the  blessing  of  the  peacemaker  has  been 
won  in  history  through  the  hard-fought  battles  of  souls, 
and  by  the  triumphs  of  truth  in  the  conflicts  of  the  ages. 

This  necessary  law  of  conflict  for  the  attainment  of  the 
promised  land  by  any  people,  is  written  largely  on  the 
course  of  histor3\  Israel  of  old,  for  example,  was  com- 
pelled to  wage  exterminating  war  in  order  that  it  might 
clear  a  little  space  for  the  true  religion  to  find  pure  air  and 
have  room  to  grow  in ;  Rome  must  send  her  legions  to  all 
quarters  of  the  known  world  to  establish  over  barbarian 
chaos  the  first  principles  of  law  and  order ;  modern  history 
has  not  been  exempt  from  the  same  dire  necessity ;  reform- 
ers and  statesmen,  philanthropists  and  Christians,  have  had 
necessity  laid  upon  them  to  summon  armed  forces  to  fields 
where  historic  battles  for  human  rights  and  liberties  have 
been  waged ;  and  no  man  can  say  that  even  now  the  last 
necessity  of  combat  and  bloodshed  for  the  advance  of  soci- 
ety is  passed,  and  that  at  length  for  the  triumph  of  the 
moral  powers  in  history  there  need  be  war  no  more. 
Where  peace  —  the  peace  of  a  Christian  civilization  —  can- 


244  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

not  be  made  without  war,  then  war  becomes  the  moral 
task  of  a  people,  and  the  sacrifice  of  war  their  only  way 
of  winning  for  themselves  or  their  children  the  kingdom 
which  is  the  promised  blessing  of  the  makers  of  peace. ^ 

This  law  of  conflict  —  always  moral  and  sometimes  tem- 
poral —  which  is  the  conspicuous  necessity  of  the  progress 
of  the  kingdom  of  God  on  the  large  arena  of  national  life, 
holds  equally  as  law  in  all  the  spheres  of  human  attain- 
ment. Moral  gain  is  ever  a  victory  of  spirit.  Even  the 
progress  of  the  mind  in  knowledge  of  truth  is  to  be  reached 
through  conflict.  In  science  and  in  theology  every  new 
knowledge  or  happier  faith  has  been  realized  through  the 
clash  of  intellects  and  amid  the  strife  of  tongues.  Indus- 
trial progress  likewise,  is  an  incessant,  and  often  embittered 
conflict  of  human  interests. 

Recognizing,  therefore,  the  necessity  of  conflict  as  a 
general  law  of  the  moral  process  in  this  world.  Christian 
ethics  has  further  to  inquire  how  far,  and  by  what  means, 
conflict  itself  may  be  ethicized  in  the  Spirit  of  the  Christ. 

The  question  arises  at  this  point  whether  the  law  of 
conflict  which  is  admitted  to  be  a  necessity  of  the  moral 
progress  of  a  sinful  race,  is  determined  solely  by  the  con- 
ditions of  pre-existent  evil,  and  can  be  regarded  therefore 
only  as  the  law  of  progress  of  this  evil  world ;  or  whether, 
in  any  sense  or  degree,  conflict  may  be  conceived  to  be  a 
moral  law  for  any  moral  world,  a  general  law  of  all  moral 
life  and  attainment. 

This  question  is  not  merely  speculative,  for  it  will  dis- 
close some  direct  relations  to  certain  social  ideas,  which 
are  put  forward  as  the  true  means  by  which  the  highest 
good  for  mankind  should  be  sought,  and  through  which 
alone  we  may  hope  for  its  realization.  It  is  maintained  in 
such  social  theories  that  conflict  is  not  a  necessary  law  for 
a  normal  social  life,  and  that  therefore  the  method  of  com- 
petition, which  is  followed  in  our  present  industrial  organ- 
ization is  to  be  left  behind  in  the  coming  world-age. 

1  "  Peace  without  conflict,  enjoyment  without  work,  belong  to  the  time  of 
Paradise;  history  knows  both  only  as  results  of  unceasing,  laborious  effort" 
(Ihering,    Der  Kampf  urn's  Eecht,  s.  4). 


METHODS    OF   PEOGRESSIVE    REALIZATION  245 

Any  particular  means  of  conflict  which  have  been  used 
in  the  struggle  of  civilization,  it  may  at  once  be  admitted, 
need  not  be  regarded  as  essential  conditions  or  necessary 
incidents  of  the  moral  law  of  good  through  conflict.  Bows 
and  arrows,  gunpowder  and  muskets,  artillery  of  tremen- 
dous destructive  power,  and  torpedoes  capable  of  making 
the  earth  quake,  or  even  the  weapons  now  in  use  of  indus- 
trial warfare,  such  as  strikes,  boycotts,  or  trusts,  are  none 
of  them,  necessarily,  indispensable  means  either  of  economic 
progress  or  of  the  contest  of  moral  ideas  for  supremacy 
over  evil.  But  if  we  suppose  that  the  methods  of  conflict 
were  divested  of  the  destructiveness,  cruelty,  and  wrath 
which  accompany  them  in  the  collisions  of  a  world  where 
sin  and  death  reign,  can  we  affirm  that  by  the  happy  loss 
of  all  these  concomitants  of  evil,  the  necessity  of  conflict 
itself  would  be  superseded,  and  some  other  law  of  progress 
be  substituted  for  it?  Can  we  afhrm  the  utter  abrogation 
of  the  law  of  progress  through  conflict  in  an  ideal  society 
or  state  ? 

1.  In  answer  to  this  question  it  may  be  observed  that 
so  universal  a  law  of  life  as  this  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  introduced  into  our  moral  nature  simply  as  a  conse- 
quence of  sin.  To  some  extent  the  law  of  conflict  is  in- 
volved in  the  necessity  for  effort,  and  of  effort  not  only  for 
the  exercise  of  power  over  nature,  but  also  in  the  reactions 
of  will  against  the  stimulus  of  external  influences.  So  far 
as  free  moral  life  is  a  reaction  of  inward  force  against 
external  conditions,  an  element  of  conflict  is  introduced 
among  the  vital  necessities  of  the  finite  moral  creation. 
Even  the  striving  of  a  pure  spirit  with  God  for  more 
knowledge  and  light,  although  sinless  and  blessed,  would 
be  of  the  nature  of  a  conflict ;  Jacob's  wrestling  with  the 
angel  of  the  Lord  is  typical  of  all  moral  winning  of  bless- 
ing, although  only  in  a  sinful  being  need  there  be  left  the 
mark  of  the  conflict  on  the  hollow  of  the  thigh.  We  have 
not  to  suppose  with  the  Platonists  that  the  soul  contends 
with  some  formless  and  friendless  matter,  which  offers  its 
dark  limitation  even  to  the  Divine  Spirit ;  but  we  must 
find  in  the  primal  relation  of  the  finite  being  to  God  him- 


246  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

self  the  moral  condition  and  necessity  for  a  wrestling  of 
man  for  the  blessing.  We  may  well  imagine  that  in  a 
matured  and  perfected  moral  life  —  the  life  of  an  archangel 
that  excels  in  strength  —  the  glorified  spirit  shall  discover 
ever  new  and  higher  revelations  of  the  divine  which  will 
call  forth  all  the  energies  and  flame  of  its  being  for  their 
mastery.  We  may  hesitate  to  assume  that  the  law  at  least 
of  the  mastery  of  good  through  effort,  which  seems  thus 
to  be  an  elemental  law  of  finite  moral  being,  extends  only 
to  the  imperfect  beginnings  of  a  human  society,  and  shall 
have  no  farther  and  higher  uses  in  the  kingdom  of  God. 
It  is  conceivable  that  through  the  world-ages  to  come  there 
may  be  a  glad  and  glorious  strife  among  the  blessed  as  to 
whom  shall  be  least  among  them,  and  the  servants  of  all. 

2.  We  can  further  conceive  how  the  method  of  conflict 
which  we  have  seen  to  be  thus  grounded  in  human  nature, 
may  itself  be  thoroughly  moralized  and  spiritualized.  And 
so  far  as  we  can  suppose  it  to  be  thus  fitted  for  use  as  a 
method  of  the  Spirit,  we  may  affirm  its  continuation  and 
perpetuity  as  a  principle  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  When 
thus  redeemed  from  selfishness  the  competitions  of  pure 
spirits  will  be  a  healthful  and  free  play  of  life  in  the  stimu- 
lus and  exercise  of  all  their  powers  of  being.  Such  conflict 
will  be  a  striving  together  of  the  redeemed  in  love.  It 
will  be  emulation  undesecrated  by  ambition.  It  will  be 
the  victory  of  one  to  the  praise  of  the  other.  It  will  occa- 
sion the  joy  of  one  in  the  triumph  of  another.  It  will  be 
pure  life  in  the  motion  and  sparkle  of  its  elemental  ener- 
gies. Such  perfect  life  will  be  like  a  pure  lake  with  the 
breeze  of  heaven  on  its  waters.  The  kingdom  of  heaven, 
or  the  ideal  human  society,  will  thus  be  conceived  as  no 
dead  uniformity,  no  forced  governmental  equality,  no 
crushing  nationalism.  Individualism  in  its  highest  powers, 
and  its  freest  play,  will  enter  naturally  and  heartily  into 
its  eager  and  triumphal  life.  Perfect  life  would  be  dull 
without  such  exercise  of  freedom. 

There  is  no  more  sublimated  conception  of  material 
existence  than  our  physical  science  seeks  to  apprehend  in 
its  doctrine  of  the  interstellar  ether.     Yet  that   ethereal 


METHODS   OF   PROGRESSIVE   REALIZATION  247 

sometliing  is  assumed  as  the  medium  of  radiation,  as  the 
very  rhythm  of  motions;  and  the  light  itself  in  its  pure  and 
vitalizing  unity  is  a  competition  and  harmony  of  wave- 
motions.  Light,  the  purest  and  most  spiritualized  material 
existence,  may  furnish  a  true  analogy  of  the  moral  and  spirit- 
ual sphere  of  being,  the  harmony  of  which  shall  consist  in 
the  fulness  of  energies  that  are  in  constant  interplay 
and  interdependence. 

It  is  not  competition  which  is  the  evil  principle  of  our 
society,  as  it  is  not  the  rebounding  of  the  atoms  which 
renders  nature  subject  to  death.  An  interruption  of  the 
free  exchanges  of  the  elements,  the  concentration  of  elec- 
tric forces  in  some  single  cloud,  may  carry  tempest  and 
lightnings  to  the  earth;  but  the  free  and  large  competi- 
tions of  nature's  powers  in  the  ample  heaven  and  around 
the  whole  earth  are  beneficent.  It  is  forced  and  immoral 
competition,  competition  subordinated  to  lust,  made  the 
servant  of  sin,  monopolizing  competition,  which  curses  the 
earth.  When  the  method  of  competition  is  freed  from 
lust  and  the  grasp  of  greed,  it  may  bring  to  us  blessings 
of  God  from  under  the  whole  heavens ;  happy  angels 
might  emulate  each  other  in  their  ministering  flights.^ 

Conceiving  of  the  law  of  conflict  as  freed  in  this  manner 
from  the  passions  of  men  and  the  necessities  of  strife 
imposed  by  the  hostilities  of  the  kingdom  of  evil,  we  may 
discern  how  the  competitions  of  righteousness  may  coexist 
with,  and  be  conserved  under,  another  great  law  of  the 
moral  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  which  we  next  pro- 
ceed to  notice. 

II.  The  method  of  the  realization  of  the  Christian 
Ideal  is,  secondly,  the  method  of  cooperation. 

Beginnings  of  this  law  of  progress  may  be  discovered  on 
what  Mr.  Spencer  calls  the  "sub-human"  plane,  in  the 
instincts  and  habits  of  gregarious  animals.  Among  crea- 
tures that  flock  together  there  is  observed  to  come  into 
play  a  principle  of  cooperation,  in  consequence  of  which 

1  Even  when  competition  is  defined  in  the  narrowest  meaning  as  rivalry  of 
two  for  the  same  thing,  it  is  not  necessaril}^  unmoral,  provided  it  be  rivalry 
under  the  higher  law  of  love  —  love  guiding  the  rivalry  aud  using  the  possession. 


248  CHEISTIAN   ETHICS 

the  individual  receives  benefits  and  avoids  evils  through 
its  association  with  others  in  the  flock  or  herd,  and  by 
which  also  its  actions  are  restrained  by  "  the  need  for  non- 
interference with  the  like  actions  of  associated  individ- 
uals." 1 

In  the  course  of  human  association  and  progress  of  civil- 
ization, this  law  of  cooperation  slowly  yet  surely  gains 
extension  and  power,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  method 
of  conflict  bacomes  secondary  in  importance,  and  circum- 
scribed in  its  operation.  The  history  of  civilization  indi- 
cates already  an  immense  gain  of  the  action  of  the  principle 
of  cooperation  over  the  action  of  the  principle  of  com- 
petition. The  individual,  for  example,  in  the  civilized 
state,  trusts  the  community  through  its  organized  justice 
to  protect  him  in  the  larger  part  of  his  personal  rights. 
The  progress  of  civilization  might  almost  be  written  on 
this  single  line  as  the  progress  of  cooperation.  And  the 
Christian  Ideal  is  the  ideal  of  the  kingdom  of  organized 
love.  The  competition,  such  as  may  remain  in  a  thor- 
oughly ethical  state,  will  be  comprehended  in,  and  work 
together  with,  its  universal  charity. 

The  general  mode  of  the  realization  of  the  moral  ideal 
is  to  be  described,  consequentl}',  in  the  terms  of  a  twofold 
process,  as  the  double  action  and  reaction  of  the  laws  of 
conflict  and  cooperation,  with  an  evident  increase  of  the 
influence  of  the  latter  and  decrease  of  the  prevalence  of 
the  former,  so  that  finally  only  such  competition  shall  be 
left  as  may  find  room  and  play  under  the  supreme  law  of 
love. 

Tlie  general  methods  through  which  the  good  makes 
progress  towards  its  kingdom,  may  be  described  by  the 
more  distinctive  Christian  words,  sacrifice  and  service. 
For  sacrifice  is  often  the  necessity  of  the  Christian  conflict 
with  evil,  and  service  is  the  peculiarly  Christian  form  of 
cooperation.  The  way  of  divine  love  in  our  world  is 
known  by  the  sign  of  the  Cross :  and  apostles  of  tlie  cruci- 
fied One  wrote  themselves  down  as  "your  servants  for 
Jesus'  sake."  ^     These    two   words,   sacrifice    and   service, 

1  Herbert  Spencer,  Justice,  p.  15.  2  o  Cor.  iv.  5. 


METHODS   OF  PROGRESSIVE  REALIZATION  249 

denote  the  Christian  method  of  seeking  the  answer  to  the 
Lord's  prayer,  "  Thy  kingdom  come."  These  great  Chris- 
tian words  draw  ''  transcendent  meanings  up  "  from  the 
memories  of  the  martyrs,  and  the  devotions  of  the  heroes 
of  faith,  and  the  daily  duties  of  many  of  the  humble  saints 
of  our  human  homes.  But  these  w^ords,  sacrifice  and  ser- 
vice, mark  the  way  of  the  Christ  through  history  to  his 
kingdom ;  they  do  not  describe  the  kingdom  itself,  which 
he  shall  deliver  to  the  Father.  Sacrifice  is  the  means  to 
the  Christian  end;  but  the  end  is  life, — the  life  which 
abounds.^  Service  is  the  method  of  love,  but  love  itself  is 
the  end  of  the  service.  The  supreme  good  is  the  reign  of 
love,  universal  and  eternal ;  the  methods  through  wdiich  it 
is  to  be  gained,  are  not  to  be  exalted  to  the  good  itself 
which  is  to  be  gained;  the  sacrifice  and  the  service  of  the 
Christian  man  are  to  be  chosen  not  for  their  own  sake,  but 
in  order  that  the  Kingdom  of  God  may  come. 

The  general  methods,  which  we  have  stated,  of  the 
progress  of  the  moral  ideal  among  men,  relate  mainly  to 
our  life  in  its  personal  good  and  social  welfare.  But 
man's  life  stands  also  over  against  nature ;  and  if  man  is 
ever  to  reach  the  ideal  ends  of  his  being,  he  must  bring  the 
whole  realm  of  nature  into  subjection  under  his  feet.  The 
coming  of  the  kingdom  of  the  supreme  good  needs,  there- 
fore, to  be  still  further  considered  with  reference  to  the 
domain  of  nature. 

III.  The  method  of  the  realization  of  the  Christian 
Ideal  in  relation  to  the  material  world  is  through  the 
increasing  spiritual  possession  and  use  of  nature. 

The  law  of  life  has  been  from  the  beo-inninG:  the  law  of 
an  increasing  spiritualization  of  matter.  Life,  in  all  its 
ascending  power,  beauty,  and  worth,  has  been  a  continual 
access  of  spirit  to  the  creation.  There  is  no  profounder 
or  more  comprehensive  conce^^tion  of  evolution  than  that 
afforded  by  the  law  of  the  increasing  fitness  and  service  of 
the  material  to  the  spiritual.  This  conception,  which  is 
prevalent  in  the  upper  currents  of  German  thought,  is  the 
higher  truth  needed  to  complete  the  partial  philosophy  of 

1  John  X.  10. 


250  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

evolution  which  has  ruled  the  scientific  positivism  of  Eng- 
lish thought.  The  physical  laws  of  evolution  are  but 
methods  of  nature  for  the  working  out  of  this  one  continu- 
ous spiritual  law  of  its  elements  and  forces.  Whoever 
has  once  apprehended  this  higher  law  of  the  growth  of  the 
material  for  the  spiritual,  will  refuse  to  accept  any  lower 
and  lesser  conception  of  nature  as  a  mere  arithmetical  sum 
of  elements  and  processes  without  reason  or  end  beyond 
themselves.  We  should  go,  however,  beyond  our  present 
province,  should  we  seek  to  vindicate  the  philosophical 
supremacy  of  this  law  of  the  spirit  in  nature,  and  to  indi- 
cate how  it  harmonizes  and  comprehends  all  the  methods 
of  evolution  which  are  known  to  our  science.^  We  confine 
ourselves  rather  to  some  ethical  aspects  of  this  increasing 
subjection  of  the  material  to  the  spiritual,  through  which 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  draws  near. 

As  means  to  this  subordination  of  the  material  elements 
to  spiritual  possession  and  use,  the  progress  of  the  arts 
and  sciences  is  to  be  regarded  as  having  a  moral  signifi- 
cance, and  as  contributing  to  the  further  realization  of  the 
Christian  ethical  ideal.  The  husbandman,  who  uses 
improved  means  of  agriculture,  brings  larger  fields  under 
the  dominion  of  his  will,  and  his  broad  harvests  are  victo- 
ries of  the  idea  in  nature.  Every  new  mastery  of  the 
elements  by  our  wisdom  is  an  advance  along  the  way  of 
the  redemption  of  matter  by  the  spirit  and  for  spiritual 
uses.  The  subjection  of  steam  to  man's  will  and  work 
was  a  notable  triumph  of  the  kingdom  of  the  spirit.  The 
telephone  marks  another  victory  of  mind  over  matter. 
And  nature  waits  impatient  for  what  further  use  and 
mastery  by  the  spirit  which  is  in  man  !  The  reign  of  the 
ideal  is  advanced  by  our  sciences  and  inventions  directly 
by  this  use  of  nature  for  spiritual  ends,  and  also  indirectly 
through  the  liberation  of  man's  energies   for  other  and 

1  This  law  of  the  increasing  spiritnalization  of  the  natural  was  followed  by 
Richard  Rothe  in  his  Tlieoloffical  Ethics  with  a  speculative  boldness  and  free- 
dom almost  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  modern  thought.  But  the  law  of 
the  increase  of  the  energy  of  the  Spirit  in  the  material  world  is  not  to  be  fol- 
lowed merely  in  speculative  thought ;  it  is  a  law  of  historic  growth,  and  as 
such  a  fact  of  observation. 


METHODS   OF   PROGKESSIVE  REALIZATION  251 

higher  employments  than  the  conflict  with  material  condi- 
tions. Our  humming  machinery  and  multiplying  inven- 
tions yield  more  wealth,  and  make  possible  also  more 
intellectual  and  spiritual  fellowship  throughout  the  world ; 
they  give  us  not  only  riches  in  material  products,  but  also 
wealth  in  time  saved,  labor  freed,  and  opportunity  gained 
for  larger  and  freer  exercise  of  the  mental  powers.  In  the 
Old  Testament  the  workers  in  metals  and  in  stone,  and 
the  carvers  of  wood,  for  the  Tabernacle  and  the  sacred 
vessels,  were  regarded  as  working  with  the  understanding 
and  inspiration  of  the  Spirit,  as  w-ell  as  the  prophets  and 
religious  teachers  of  the  people.^  Manual  labor,  which 
aims  to  subject  the  materials  of  life  to  higher  uses,  is 
rightly  held  to  possess  spiritual  worth,  and  is  work  to  be 
done  with  spiritual  joy.  So  to  regard  all  our  work,  even 
the  lowliest,  is  not  to  secularize  the  religious  nature,  but 
to  spiritualize  the  material.  All  man's  work  in  nature  and 
upon  nature  is  to  be  wrought  in  the  spirit  and  for  the 
spirit.  This  also  is  the  highest  law  of  literature  and  art. 
Success  must  be  a  consecration.  It  is  not  to  be  attained 
by  mere  skill  in  literary  handicraft  or  artistic  touch.  The 
noblest  triumphs  in  literature  and  art  have  been  won  by 
men  whose  spirits  were  consecrated  to  the  ideal  ends  of 
their  work. 

Only  as  outward  possessions  and  the  material  wealth  of 
men  or  of  nations,  are  thus  held  in  subjection  to  the  spirit 
and  for  the  use  of  the  spirit,  are  they  to  be  regarded  as 
signs  of  true  progress  and  means  also  for  the  further  ad- 
vancement of  human  welfare.  This  body,  which  is  man's 
first  external  possession,  exists  to  be  made  the  organ  of 
his  spirit ;  the  body  is  trul}^  possessed  only  as  it  becomes 
pliant  and  obedient  to  the  spirit  wdiich  is  in  a  man. 
Equally  true  is  this  of  all  other  possession,  or  acquisi- 
tion of  external  things.  They  become  truly  ours  only 
through  some  spiritual  appropriation  of  them.  Wealth  is 
only  so  much  gold  so  long  as  it  is  hoarded ;  it  is  a  man's 
capital  when  he  puts  himself  into  it,  and  makes  it  his  ser- 
vant, doing  his  bidding,  carrying  his  thought,  working  out 
his  ideas,  embodying  his  spirit.     It  has  been  happily  said 

1  Ex.  xxxi.  3-6. 


252  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

that  a  man  has  right  to  as  much  property  as  he  can  ethicize. 
Whatever  may  be  a  man's  legal  title  to  more  property  than 
he  can  put  to  ethical  uses,  or  make  subservient  to  his  will 
as  moral  capital  working  out  his  own  and  others'  welfare, 
this  saying  illustrates  the  truth  that  a  man  really  possesses 
only  so  much  property  as  he  makes  his  own  in  a  spiritual 
way ;  that  we  really  have  only  what  we  ethicize  ;  that  all 
else  is  dead  matter,  or  mere  external  stuff  to  us.  The  only 
real  and  permanent  ownership  of  things  is  in  the  spirit  and 
by  the  spirit ;  all  other  ownership  is  apparent,  temporal, 
having  no  abiding  possession.  The  triumphs  of  modern 
science  over  nature,  and  the  increasing  subjection  of  ele- 
mental forces  to  man's  will,  as  well  as  the  ministry  of  all 
lands  and  climes  to  our  uses,  would  seem  to  indicate  a 
rapid  progress  of  humanity  towards  its  ideal  welfare  along 
these  lines  of  power.  But  the  progress  will  be  real  if  the 
spirit  which  conquers  these  outward  worlds  shall  not  itself 
be  lost  in  them.  The  danger  of  civilization  is  its  materi- 
alization, or  the  loss  of  its  soul  in  the  abundance  of  the 
things  which  it  possesses.  As  nations  increase  in  wealth, 
and  the  lives  of  men  in  all  their  outward  conditions 
become  more  manifold  and  prosperous,  the  supreme  ethical 
question  becomes  urgent,  —  How  can  all  this  material  de- 
velopment be  spiritualized  ?  Can  this  wealth  be  lifted  and 
held  up  to  the  service  of  the  highest  that  is  in  man  ?  The 
moral  ideal  —  the  large  Christian  welfare  of  humanity  — 
can  ultimately  be  wrought  out  only  by  the  complete  subor- 
dination of  wealth  to  soul,  of  nature  to  spirit,  of  mammon 
to  God.  Evolution  will  not  have  reached  its  goal  until 
whatever  spiritual  capacity  and  intent  Avere  involved  in 
nature  when  the  Spirit  brooded  over  chaos,  shall  have  been 
brought  to  complete  fulfilment.  The  intermediate  state 
may  be  natural  history  ;  but  the  beginning  and  the  end  of 
the  creation  are  spiritual.^ 

This  inclusion  of  the  spiritual  conquest  and  use  of 
nature  in  Christian  ethics  is  in  harmony  with  the  relation 
which  Jesus  maintained  in  his  teaching  towards  the  nat- 
ural world.  To  the  eye  of  Jesus  nature  was  always  full  and 
fresh  with  presence  of  the  Spirit.     In  his  parables  nature 

1  Rom.  viii.  19-22. 


METHODS    OF    PEOGRESSIVE   REALIZATION  253 

was  the  language  of  the  Spirit.  In  his  teaching  nature 
became  a  metaphor  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  Moreover, 
the  commonest  things  in  men's  lives  grew  spiritually  sig- 
nificant to  the  Christ.  And  he  judged  every  daily  task 
and  duty  to  be  a  part  of  man's  spiritual  life  and  destiny. 

This  spiritualization  of  common  life  which  characterized 
Jesus'  conversation  with  men,  was  definitely  taught  in  the 
apostolic  doctrine.  The  Holy  Spirit  is  given,  not  to  the 
chosen  twelve  only,  but  to  all  who  will  receive  it;  and  it  is 
imparted  not  for  the  miraculous  gifts  of  healing  only,  or 
for  mysterious  prophesyings,  but  for  the  daily  life  and  con- 
versation of  all  who  walk  in  the  way  of  the  Christ.  In 
the  Spirit  their  whole  existence  is  to  be  sustained,  purified, 
and  made  faithful.  All  the  virtues  are  to  proceed  from 
the  Spirit.  The  most  familiar  acts  are  to  be  done  as  in  the 
dignity  and  gladness  of  a  spiritual  life,  —  the  common 
meal  is  to  be  hallowed  with  a  spiritual  blessing.  The 
Christian  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  as  we  have  received 
it  at  least  from  the  apostles,  is  not  the  doctrine  only  of 
some  marvellous  work  and  special  manifestation  of  God, 
but  the  doctrine  of  the  presence  and  working  of  the  Spirit 
of  Christ  in  everyday  life.  The  benediction  for  Chris- 
tians to  take  into  all  their  tasks,  and  to  keep  in  all  their 
love  of  nature,  is  the  communion  of  the  Holy  Ghost. 

It  has  been  laid  as  an  objection  by  some  modern  writers  against  Chris- 
tianity, that  Jesus  did  not  use  his  higher  knowledge  to  teach  men  a  more 
scientific  mastery  over  natural  forces.  But  it  is  forgotten  by  such  writers 
that  Jesus'  work,  which  he  came  from  God  to  do,  was  to  bring  men  into 
new  births  of  spiritual  life  ;  men  need  themselves  to  be  spiritualized 
before  they  can  be  trusted  with  almost  divine  powers  over  the  forces  of 
the  universe.  Jesus  neither  hastened  directly,  nor  retarded,  the  science 
which  gradually  brings  nature  into  subjection  to  man's  will,  for  he  gave 
his  life  to  bring  man  himself  under  the  power  of  the  Sjiirit ;  and  as  that 
chief  triumph  of  the  Spirit  is  won,  other  and  lesser  subjection  of  the 
world-powers  to  man  may  follow.  Our  present  Christian  problem  is  to 
keep  the  process  of  the  spiritual  conversion  and  use  of  power  and  riches 
up  to  the  increase  of  our  wealth  and  possession  of  the  forces  of  nature. 
It  should  be  remembered,  moreover,  that  Jesus'  mighty  works  commend 
themselves  to  rational  belief  as  manifestations  of  a  higher  spiritual  mas- 
tery and  use  of  nature  than  men  knew,  or  yet  have  acquired  ;  and  that 
his  miracles,  consequently,  have  a  prophetic  character  as  anticipations 
and  signs  of  a  future  subjection  of  all  things  to  the  power  of  the  Spirit 
in  the  world-age  to  come. 


CHAPTER   VI 

THE   SPHERES  IN  WHICH  THE  CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  IS   TO  BE 

REALIZED 

The  reign  of  love,  or  kingdom  of  God,  on  earth  is  to 
possess  and  to  fill  with  good  all  the  spheres  of  human  life. 
Its  progress  under  the  general  laws  and  through  the  dif- 
ferent epochs  which  have  been  described,  is  to  be  observed 
further  in  the  particular  spheres  of  men's  relationships  and 
activities. 

I.   It  takes  possession  of  and  works  from  personal  centres. 

We  have  already  described  the  personal  nature  of  the 
good  which  is  promised  in  the  Gospel  of  the  kingdom  (p. 
100).  The  working  of  the  power  of  the  new  life  in  the 
personal  sphere  and  from  personal  centres  is  plainly  set 
forth  in  one  of  the  most  distinctive,  and  one  of  the  most 
misunderstood  scenes  in  the  ministry  of  Jesus.  Biblical 
students  have  usually  recognized  in  our  Lord's  question- 
ing of  his  disciples  at  Csesarea  Philippi  a  climax  and  a 
crisis  in  his  ministry.  There  at  last  the  truth  of  his 
Messianic  nature  and  calling,  which  had  been  lying  darkly 
in  Peter's  soul,  flashes  into  clear  consciousness,  and  in  a 
moment  Peter  has  made  the  first  confession  of  Christ.  We 
can  almost  catch  across  the  centuries  the  tone  of  spiritual 
exultation  in  which  the  Master  receives  that  great  confes- 
sion :  "  Blessed  art  thou,  Simon  Bar- Jon  ah  !  "  ^  At  last  one 
man  knows  the  Christ.  The  Lord,  looking  into  the  face  of 
that  worshipful  disciple,  perceives  that  his  gospel  has  at 
length  come  home  to  one  man ;  his  Messianic  truth  is  no 
longer  known  only  to  himself  and  his  God,  but  Simon 
Peter  has  received  it;  Peter's  life  is  aglow  with  it;  and 

1  Mat.  xvi.  17. 
254 


SPHERES    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  255 

his  Gospel,  once  having  gained  possession  of  a  human  soul, 
can  never  henceforth  fail  or  be  lost  from  the  life  of  human- 
ity. The  Church  of  the  Holy  Ghost  is  already  founded 
in  one  man's  soul,  and  our  Lord,  looking  upon  the  disciple 
in  whom  the  truth  of  his  kingdom  has  come,  sees  that 
his  Church  is  founded  upon  the  man  with  the  Gospel  in 
his  soul,  and  is  destined  in  the  after-ages  to  be  built  upon 
men  with  his  truth  in  their  lives ;  and  against  the  man 
with  his  Spirit  in  him,  the  Lord  knows  that  the  gates  of 
Hades  shall  not  prevail. 

The  words  of  Christ  which  follow  immediately  after  this 
exultant  text,  make  only  more  emphatic  the  truth  that  the 
first  Christian  man  secures  the  establishment  of  the  Church 
which  is  to  be  built  upon  him,  and  that  in  his  Christian 
manhood  he  holds  the  keys  of  the  kingdom.  Peter,  the 
first  Christian  confessor,  has  his  special  place  and  primacy 
inasmuch  as  he  was  the  pronounced  beginning  and  example 
of  the  Christian  manhood  on  which  the  Church  of  Christ 
is  built,  and  to  him,  as  the  representative  and  leader  of  the 
men  in  whom  truth  is  to  come  to  its  power,  the  keys  of 
the  kingdom  are  given. 

This  passage,  to  which  Rome  has  done  ecclesiastical 
violence,  and  of  which  Geneva  has  been  too  afraid  to  see 
its  full,  simple  truth,  is  the  signal  illustration  from  the 
Lord's  own  ministry  of  the  law,  that  from  personal  centres, 
and  through  the  vitalities  of  personal  influence,  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  is  to  be  established  on  earth.  Not  the  con- 
fession, nor  the  man,  but  the  man  holding  his  confession, 
is  the  rock  on  which  Christ  built  his  Church.  The  Chris- 
tian man,  not  his  creed,  but  the  man  with  Christ's  truth  in 
him,  is  in  every  age  the  power  to  whom  is  given  the 
keys  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  Similarly  the  apostles  find 
in  individual  men  the  living  foundation  of  the  kingdom  of 
God.  St.  Peter  himself,  remembering  perhaps  Csesarea 
Philippi,  yet  never  thinking  of  keeping  its  blessing  and 
its  consecration  as  his  own  peculiar  possession,  speaks  of 
Christian  men  as  "also  living  stones,"^  which  are  built 
up  into  "  a  spiritual  house  " ;  and  St.  Paul  likewise  per- 

1 1  Peter  ii.  5. 


256  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

ceived  that  the  Church  of  Gocl  was  built  on  the  foundation 
of  Cln-istian  men,  the  foundation,  namely,  of  the  apostles 
and  the  prophets,  Jesus  Christ  himself  being  the  chief 
corner-stone ;  ^  so,  also,  the  pillar  in  the  temple  of  God, 
which  St.  John  saw,  was  not  a  confession  of  faith,  nor  a 
doctrine,  but  the  Christian  man  who  had  overcome  the 
world.^ 

The  growth  of  the  apostolic  Church  shows  the  same  law 
of  the  extension  of  the  kingdom  along  the  lines,  and  by  the 
contacts  of  personal  influence.  Around  Peter  the  Confes- 
sor, not  around  Peter's  confession,  the  first  Church  in  Jeru- 
salem was  gathered.  Apostolic  men,  to  whom  the  Holy 
Ghost  was  given,  were  at  Pentecost  the  founders  of  the 
Christian  Church.  This  law  of  the  increase  of  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  on  earth  through  the  magnetic  contacts  of 
personal  influence,  and  from  personal  centres  of  truth, 
still  obtains,  and  may  find  its  illustration  in  the  course  of 
any  reform,  the  expansion  of  every  large  philanthropy,  the 
gathering  from  any  city  of  the  helpful  Christian  commu- 
nity. We  speak  sometimes  of  the  power  of  ideas.  But 
ideas  in  themselves  are  but  abstractions.  Ideas  to  become 
powers,  must  get  themselves  incarnated  in  living  souls. 
Ideas  become  living  forces  when  embodied  in  men. 
Leaders  of  men,  as  Emerson  has  said,  are  "  made  of  the 
same  stuff  of  which  events  are  made."  Unembodied  truths, 
doctrines  which  have  not  become  vitalized  in  the  hearts  of 
men,  are  powerless  as  the  moonbeams  in  tlie  air.  When 
God  in  history  has  intended  that  His  truth  should  press 
notably  on,  He  has  put  that  truth  into  a  single  soul,  and 
the  man  with  that  one  idea  from  heaven  inspiring  him,  has 
become  the  prophet,  the  reformer,  the  great  apostle  —  Abra- 
ham seeking  a  better  country:  Moses  leading  Israel  from 
the  house  of  bondage,  and  bringing  the  higher  law  down 
from  the  holy  mountain ;  Elijah  making  the  word  of  the 
Lord  a  power  in  a  wicked  court ;  David  in  the  name  of  his 
God  conquering  hosts  of  Philistines  ;  Nehemiah,  with  the 
book  of  the  law  open  before  him,  rebuilding  and  ruling  a 
desecrated  city ;  John  the  Baptist  bringing  all  Jerusalem 

1  Eph.  ii.  20.  2  Rev.  3. 12. 


SPHERES    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  257 

to  its  knees ;  and  above  all,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  Christ 
himself,  who  was  the  Word  made  flesh,  the  human  Incar- 
nation of  the  eternal  Truth  and  Love,  wdio  redeems  man  in 
a  living  personal  way,  putting  his  life  into  our  life,  and 
taking  our  life  into  his  virtue  and  power.  Always  God's 
method  of  coming  in  his  kingdom  throughout  our  history 
has  been  this  personal  method,  a  flesh  and  blood  method  of 
saving  men.  The  last,  simplest  and  permanent  testament 
which  the  Christ  left  of  his  truth,  was  a  personal  testa- 
ment, —  the  bread  and  the  wine  which  should  signify  his 
flesh  and  blood,  which  are  given  for  the  life  of  the  world. 
The  Gospel  is  God's  richest  and  fullest  personal  communi- 
cation of  Himself  to  men.  It  is  not  a  divine  state-craft,  or 
governmental  aid,  or  institutional  charity ;  but  it  is  a  per- 
sonal gift,  it  is  the  personal  power  of  God  with  man. 
The  first  and  the  last,  the  supreme  fact  of  the  universe  is 
personality,  —  God's  infinite  personality,  true  as  reason, 
warm  as  love,  eternal  as  spirit.  The  second  fact  in  the 
universe,  second  and  subordinate  only,  because  derived 
from  the  first,  is  also  personality,  —  the  moral  personality 
of  angels  and  of  men,  having  reason,  capable  of  conscience, 
receiving  immortality.  And  the  method  of  all  God's  gifts 
and  revelations  is  from  person  to  person  ;  —  from  his  own 
eternal  Fatherhood  giving  life  and  being  to  us  in  our  son- 
ship  ;  then  dwelling  among  us,  God  with  us  in  the  Son  of 
his  love ;  and  in  this  present  dispensation  of  the  Spirit 
communicating  his  truth  and  grace  from  man  to  man  along 
the  lines  of  our  natural  relationships,  and  by  the  touch  and 
contact  of  persons  who  are  themselves  made  alive  by  his 
Spirit. 

In  a  living  organism  the  individual  cell  is  the  ultimate 
centre  of  vitality.  Individual  cells  are  organized,  it  is  true, 
in  the  "  social  tissue,"  to  repeat  Mr.  Stephen's  excellent 
phrase.  But  the  person  is  the  ultimate  social  cell.  Vital- 
ity must  be  kept  pure  and  constant  in  these  ultimate  per- 
sonal cells,  or  the  whole  social  tissue  will  break  down. 
Nor  can  the  surrounding  tissue  of  itself  save  the  individual 
cells  from  disintegration,  if  they  become  diseased.  Any 
remedial  treatment  of  a  diseased  social  organism  which 


258  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

does  not  renew  tlie  cells,  revitalizing  them,  is  only  tem- 
porary good  at  the  best.  Christian  ethics  insists  on  con- 
stitutional treatment  of  sinful  humanity  as  it  seeks  to 
create  anew  the  primal  personal  cells  of  the  social  organism. 
The  kingdom  of  Christ  comes  first  in  the  personal  centres 
and  personal  spheres  of  life ;  and  then  of  these  renewed 
souls  is  to  be  formed  the  new  humanity  of  which  Christ 
is  the  head. 

II.  The  Christian  Ideal,  working  from  living  personal 
centres,  is  progressively  to  be  realized  in  Christian  society. 

There  is  a  general  social  law  of  the  multiplication  of  the 
individual  life  through  the  community  in  which  it  works. 
The  Christian  community  illustrates  this  law  of  the  increase 
of  individual  power.  For  the  personal  influence  of  the  single 
Christian  man  is  greatly  enlarged  as  it  is  put  into  the  multipli- 
cation-table of  the  Christian  Church.  The  total  Christianity 
of  an  age,  that  is  to  say,  its  already  realized  Christian  Ideal, 
is  the  gracious  multiple  of  the  individual  lives  of  believers. 
In  this  Christian  multiplication-table  of  life  the  least  life 
counts.  On  the  other  hand,  evil  is  ultimately  divisive 
and  destructive.  Temporarily  it  may  be  cumulative  of 
power  and  grow  rich  in  its  baneful  prosperity.  But  ulti- 
mately evil  is  a  divisive  factor  of  history.  It  breaks  up 
the  social  unities.  It  isolates  men.  It  pulverizes  human- 
ity down  to  its  last  individual  atoms.  Christianity  has 
been  called  an  essentially  political  principle,  for  it  is  archi- 
tectural and  constructive.  The  Christian  good  grows 
among  men  after  a  law  of  organic  increase.  The  Chris- 
tian social  tissue  is  formed  by  the  vital  growth  and  corre- 
lations of  the  individual  cells  in  the  one  Christian  body. 
In  tracing,  therefore,  the  progressive  realization  of  the 
Christian  Ideal  we  have  next  to  consider  the  social  spheres 
of  its  embodiment,  and  especially  the  modes  of  operation 
which  it  manifests  in  these  spheres,  and  the  vitalities  which 
it  imparts  to  them. 

The  spheres  of  social  life  should  be  defined  in  a  scientific  method  from 
observation  of  the  existing  forms  which  social  development  has  assmned. 
A  scientific  account  of  the  differentiation  of  social  forms  is  of  the  first 
importance  in  social  ethics.     (See,  on  the  morphological  classification  of 


SPHERES    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  259 

social  organs,  and  its  sociological  importance,  a  suggestive  article  by- 
Mr.  Dike,  Andover  Beview,  June,  1890.)  In  the  social  organism,  cer- 
tain forms  have  become  distinct  and  definite  in  their  functions,  as  are 
the  lungs  or  the  heart  in  the  body  ;  other  social  elements  seem  to  be 
general  and  pervasive,  like  connective  tissue,  or  the  organic  matter  which 
is  specialized  in  the  several  organs  of  the  body.  From  this  "vital  stuff" 
of  society,  it  is  not  impossible  that  new  organic  forms  may  be  integrated 
in  future  social  development;  partially  differentiated  social  forms  may 
be  now  recognized  as  in  process  of  formation. 

To  the  first  class  of  definitely  differentiated  social  forms  belong  the 
Family,  the  State,  and  the  Church.  These  are  the  social  spheres  which  have 
furnished  the  divisions  treated  of  in  the  older  books  on  social  philosophy. 
Should  our  social  ethics,  however,  be  confined  to  these  three  spheres,  we 
should  exclude  some  of  the  most  significant  movements  of  modern  indus- 
trial life.  Kecent  writers,  therefore,  have  added  a  fourth  social  sphere, 
which  they  have  called  the  civil  community.  But  this  phrase  seems  at 
once  to  be  too  broad  and  too  narrow  ;  it  does  not  exclude  with  sufficient 
precision  those  civil  functions  which  fall  properly  within  the  sphere  of 
the  State,  and  it  fails  to  include  some  social  groups  which  are  gaining 
coherence  within  the  social  body,  —  such  as  certain  forms  of  industrial 
organization  and  cooperation.  We  prefer,  therefore,  to  classify  social 
forms  under  two  general  divisions  according  to  the  determinateness  of 
their  differentiation  ;  having  thus  (1)  the  primary,  fully  differentiated 
organs  of  society,  and  (2)  the  secondary,  indeterminate  forms  of  social 
life.  The  latter  may  have  more  or  less  definiteness  and  social  stability  ; 
and  to  some  extent  their  functions  may  be  interchangeable.  The  first 
are  the  fixed  and  permanent  forms  with  non-interchangeable  functions. 

Our  classification  determines  also  the  order  in  which  these  forms  of 
social  life  may  be  arranged.  The  family  was  the  social  organ  first  devel- 
oped ;  it  contained  within  itself,  in  its  earliest  formation,  both  the  State 
and  the  Church,  — the  father  was  both  king  and  priest.  After  the  sepa- 
ration of  the  political  and  religious  powers  and  functions  from  the  family, 
there  remains  the  large  and  still  partially  organized  sphere  of  industrial 
and  social  life,  which  may  be  further  differentiated  into  other  specific 
means  and  functions  of  social  well-being. 


§  1.     THE    SPHERE    OF    THE    FAMILY 

The  family  is  itself  a  good,  or  a  factor  of  moral  worth, 
which  enters  into  and  must  be  perfected  in  the  highest 
good.  The  realization  of  the  Christian  Ideal  will  involve 
therefore  the  completion  and  the  perfection  of  the  family 
and  of  the  family-life.  But  the  home,  so  far  as  its  idea 
is  attained  in  any  age,  becomes  also  a  means  for  the  further 
realization  of  the  ethical  ideal.  The  family  is  to  be 
regarded,  accordingly,  in  this  twofold  aspect  of  it;  it  is 
itself  to  be  made  perfect  as  a  part  of  the  supreme  good, 


260  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

and  also  it  serves  as  a  present  means  for  the  realization  of 
the  ideal ;  it  is  to  be  viewed  both  as  an  end  and  as  a  means 
of  the  perfect  and  final  good. 

1.  The  family,  like  all  other  objects  of  moral  worth  on 
earth,  has  had  a  history  and  is  a  historic  growth.  As  no 
moral  good  seems  to  have  descended  ready-made  from 
heaven,  but  the  gifts  of  God  have  been  also  the  ends  of 
human  endeavor ;  so  likewise  the  family  was  not  made 
perfect  in  the  earliest  ages,  but  has  required  centuries  of 
social  development  to  gain  its  present  Christian  form  and 
purity.  The  Bible  shows  us  this  moral  good  of  the  family 
not  at  first  in  its  consummate  beauty,  but  only  in  its  patri- 
archal germ  ;  its  holy  truth  was  germinant  in  the  earlier 
Hebrew  customs  and  laws ;  gradually  it  threw  off  the  cor- 
ruptions of  polygamy,  emerged  from  the  earthliness  of 
human  passions,  strengthened  itself  against  the  laxities 
of  too  easy  divorce,  and  attained  in  the  later  Hebrew  com- 
munity and  the  Christian  Church,  the  purity,  permanence, 
and  power  of  the  union  of  one  man  and  one  woman  under 
the  blessing  of  the  divine  Fatherhood,  in  which  every  father- 
hood on  earth  and  in  heaven  is  named. 

The  manner  in  which  the  truth  of  the  family  and  its  pure  worth  were 
brought  out  in  the  course  of  the  biblical  history  and  teaching,  illustrates 
in  a  very  instructive  way  the  general  method  of  the  realization  of  ideal 
good  through  the  providential  development  of  man's  history.  For  in  the 
present  blessing  of  the  Christian  home  we  have  one  of  the  worked  out 
results,  one  of  the  slowly  but  thoroughly  taught  lessons  of  a  progres- 
sive revelation.  The  Old  Testament  doctrine  of  the  home  began  in 
an  age  of  the  world  which  lacked  any  proper  conception  of  the  worth 
of  the  individual  and  his  rights  ;  and  the  first  moral  lesson  taught  the 
fathers  of  the  chosen  race  of  teachers  was  not  the  right  or  value  of  the 
individual  man  and  woman,  but  the  place  and  the  power  of  the  Hebrew 
family  in  the  covenant  and  promise  of  Jehovah.  One  of  the  first  moral 
lessons  of  the  Old  Testament  is  a  family -lesson,  —  Abraham  and  Sarah, 
Isaac  and  Kebecca.  Judged  by  our  standards,  —  the  Christian  standards 
of  the  family  which  have  come  forth  purified  from  the  whole  refining  pro- 
cess of  the  history,  —  those  patriarchal  families  were  by  no  means 
models  of  domestic  felicity.  The  example  of  Rebecca  is  hardly  a  happy 
instance  for  our  marriage  ceremony.  These  were,  however,  choice  exam- 
ples for  their  times.  They  are  not  good  models  for  us,  but  they  might 
have  been  lofty  examples  of  domestic  virtue  for  the  Amalekites  or  for  the 
Sodomites.  Moreover,  in  the  Hebrew  family,  imperfect  and  polygamous 
as  it  was,  one  great  blessing  was  made  secure;  for  the  ambition  and 


SPHERES   OF   THE   CHEISTIAX   IDEAL  261 

desire  of  life  among  those  primitive  Hebrews  became  concentrated  in  the 
endeavor  and  the  passion  to  win  a  family- name,  and  to  survive  from  gen- 
eration to  generation  in  the  perpetuity  of  the  family  inheritance.  Not  a 
few  incidental  facts  and  social  customs  to  be  learned  from  the  Old  Testa- 
ment disclose  how  thoroughly  and  firmly  the  idea  of  the  family,  and  of 
the  possession  of  individual  life  through  the  family,  was  implanted  in  the 
primitive  Hebrew  consciousness.  The  family  group  in  Israel,  more  than 
in  most  primitive  communities,  "coalesced  with  the  village  or  communal 
group."  "Neighbor  and  brother  are  interchangeable  terms  for  a  fellow- 
Israelite.  The  return  of  an  Israelite  to  his  village  was  designated  by 
the  Hebrew  writers  as  a  return  to  his  family,  to  the  inheritance  of  his 
fathers."  Even  genealogies  of  persons  appear  to  be  "records  of  the  rela- 
tions of  towns."  1  And  this  emphasis,  which  from  remotest  antiquity 
had  been  put  by  the  religion  of  Israel  upon  the  family,  and  the  family- 
line,  not  only  modified  the  natural  forms  of  their  social  institutions,  but 
affected  also  profoundly  and  widely  the  moral  ideas  and  the  moral  develop- 
ment of  the  people. 

In  the  establishment  of  the  family  as  the  means  of  participation  in  the 
covenant  blessing  of  Israel,  the  idea  of  the  position  of  the  patriarch  as 
the  head  was  necessarily  made  prominent.  In  a  more  primitive  society, 
before  the  Mosaic  age,  distinct  traces  of  an  archaic  custom  of  reckoning 
descent  through  the  female  line  have  been  noticed  in  the  Bible.  (Gen. 
xxii.  20  ;  xxxvi.  ;  cf.  Judges  ix.  1-3  ;  xi.  1-3.)  But  the  tendencies  of  the 
Mosaic  legislation  and  of  the  idea  of  the  covenant  were  to  bring  paternal 
descent  into  prominence.  The  position  and  honor  of  the  father,  as  the 
head  of  the  family,  was  to  be  secured  as  the  first  condition  of  a  stable 
family-unit  of  society.  The  conception  of  true  fatherhood  has  to  be 
gained  and  honored  as  the  basis  of  further  social  growth,  as  well  as  future 
revelation  of  God.  Hence  the  connection  of  Israel  with  the  covenant, 
and  the  promise  of  Jehovah  is  through  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob.  The 
Messiah  shall  be  the  Son  of  David.  St.  .Matthew's  chapter  of  genealogies 
is  the  royal  table  of  male  descent.  This  exaltation  of  the  patriarchal 
idea  in  Israel  was  at  first,  it  is  true,  accompanied  by  some  degradation  of 
woman,  or  at  least  failed  to  bring  out  at  the  same  time  the  true,  full  idea 
of  womanhood.  The  patriarch  might  have  several  wives.  But  the  idea 
of  the  sacredness  and  worth  of  womanhood  was  really  involved  from  the 
first  in  the  idea  of  the  family,  in  the  perpetuity  of  wdiich  the  pious  Israelite 
cherished  his  hope  for  the  future.  Motherhood  became  a  religious  expec- 
tation in  Israel.  The  children  of  the  Hebrew  wife  w^re  preferred,  while 
the  child  of  the  bondw^oman  was  cast  out.  The  family-idea,  which  had 
thus  gained  in  an  earlj^  age  secure  and  deep  root  in  Israel,  brought  forth 
in  time  as  its  perfect  fruit  a  pure,  and  sweet,  and  lofty  conception  of 
woman  and  the  home.  In  the  patriarchal  hope  the  Hebrew  family  gained 
a  sanctity  which  it  possessed  nowhere  else  in  the  East.  Then  the  germ 
of  a  true  family -life  having  been  thus  implanted  in  the  promise  made  to 
Abraham,  the  laws  of  Moses  close  around  it  and  protect  it.  The  teach- 
ings of  the  prophets  purify  and  hallow  it.  But  the  law  of  divorce  given 
on  account  of  the  hardness  of  men's  hearts,  has  not  yet  dropped  away. 

1  Fenton,  Earhj  Hebrew  Life,  §  xix. 


262  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

The  commandment  of  the  family-morality  is  not  yet  made  perfect.  The 
blessing  meant  for  man  in  the  increasing  worth  and  sanctity  of  the 
Hebrew  family  has  not  yet  under  the  law  and  the  prophets  been  loosed 
entirely  from  ancient  imperfections,  or  freed  from  all  natural  evil,  and 
given  to  mankind  in  its  full  and  final  perfectness.  At  last  a  daughter  of 
the  house  of  Israel  brings  to  womanhood  the  blessing  of  the  Highest. 


In  the  teaching  of  Christ  the  temporary  expedients  and 
imperfect  conditions  of  the  family-blessing  are  removed; 
the  partial  is  made  complete  ;  and  at  last,  grounded  in  the 
essential  morality  of  the  law,  and  built  up  and  cemented 
by  the  experience  and  the  historic  sentiments  of  the 
chosen  people,  arises  the  institution  of  the  Christian  fam- 
ily. It  Avas  a  slow,  age-long,  but  successful  process  by 
which,  under  the  guidance  of  providence,  so  divine  a  crea- 
tion as  the  Christian  home  was  formed  and  perfected.  The 
history  of  the  formation  of  a  true  family  begins  with  the 
beginning  of  the  biblical  story ;  and  when  the  Bible  is  a 
finished  revelation,  the  family  also  stands  forth  in  its  Chris- 
tian unity  and  truth  as  a  completed  good. 

2.  The  family  as  a  part  of  the  Christian  Ideal  of  man, 
which  has  been  already  realized,  becomes  a  means  also  for 
the  further  realization  of  the  highest  good. 

The  Christian  family  is  chosen  and  consecrated  as  a 
means  of  grace  to  the  world.  In  the  narrative  of  the 
gospels  it  is  interesting  to  notice  how  much  of  Christ's 
work  was  done  in  human  homes.  Much  of  his  personal 
influence  and  teaching  proceeded  from  the  homes  of  men. 
If  we  had  only  the  record  of  his  words  in  the  synagogue, 
or  in  public  places,  we  should  miss  many  of  the  most 
divine  portions  of  his  gospel.  Jesus  sat  at  meat  with 
publicans  and  sinners;  he  entered  into  the  house  of  the 
Pharisee,  and  he  went  also  to  Bethany.  So  the  Son  of 
man  made  the  home,  and  its  opportunities,  a  means  of 
his  redemptive  grace.  The  most  effective  and  purest 
ethical  as  well  as  religious  influences  must  always  find 
their  abiding  place  and  power  in  the  Christian  home. 
The  Christian  family  is  called  to  take  its  happy  and  hal- 
lowed place  among  the  great  redemptive  forces  of  the 
world.     The  virtues  which  spring  up  and  flourish  in  the 


SPHERES    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  263 

shelter  of  Christian  homes  are  the  healing  virtues  of  civil- 
ization. The  marriage  covenant  has  in  it  virtue  to 
become  a  means  of  grace  to  a  community.  Every  true 
home  is  a  focus  of  light  and  warmth  for  the  social  whole. 
In  Christian  ethics,  therefore,  the  family  is  exalted  and 
reverenced  not  only  as  an  element  of  the  moral  ideal  which 
already  is  finding  embodiment  in  the  Christian  home,  but 
also  as  the  centre  and  power  of  a  new  and  better  life  for 
the  community;  and  should  any  socialistic  scheme  of 
collective  happiness  fail  to  provide  for  the  sanctity  of  the 
family,  its  success  would  prove  destructive  of  the  funda- 
mental unities  from  which  only  a  wholesome  and  happy 
social  state  can  ever  be  organized  and  perfected. 

The  ethical  prhiciple  of  monogamous  marriage  is  this :  No  person 
should  be  possessed  by  another  as  mere  means  to  his  life  ;  in  the  married 
relation  each  person  should  be  to  the  other  both  means  and  end  of  one 
common  life.  This  principle  requires  the  complete,  voluntary  losing  and 
finding  of  life  in  each  other  of  the  husband  and  wife.  In  every  kind  of 
marriage  except  monogamy  this  ethical  principle  does  not  come  to  rightful 
recognition ;  the  relation  of  the  sexes  in  such  temporary  or  multiplied 
relations  is  not  total.  But  when  personality  gains  its  full  development 
and  rights,  the  lifelong  union  of  one  man  and  one  woman  is  the  only 
relation  that  can  be  thought  of  as  meeting  the  full  claims  and  obligations 
of  personality. 

Among  recent  books,  the  ethical  principle  of  monogamy  is  well  stated 
by  Hoffding,  Ethik,  s.  200. 

§    2.     THE    SPHERE    OF    THE    STATE 

The  state  is  the  organized  form  of  society.  Society  may 
preexist  in  an  unorganized  form  before  the  development 
of  civil  institutions.  The  state  may  assume  exceedingly 
primitive  and  simple  organic  forms  in  the  process  of  its 
evolution ;  but  in  its  organic  idea  it  is  the  legalized  expres- 
sion and  embodiment  of  existing  social  relations.  The 
principle  of  the  state  has  been  said  to  be  the  idea  of  right ; 
that  idea  may  be  its  formative  principle :  but  the  existent 
social  relations  of  men  furnisli  the  materials  of  which, 
through  the  idea  of  right,  the  state  is  organized. 

In  view  of  this  distinction  it  is  apparent  that  the  state, 
even  in  its  simplest  and  least  organized  forms  among  primi- 
tive   peoples,   is   something   secondary  and   derived,  not 


264  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

primary  and  fundamental.  The  primal  fact  is  humanity, 
or  the  natural  social  relationship  of  individual  lives.  Man 
in  his  idea  and  being  is  not  one,  but  two ;  not  an  atom,  but 
a  social  unit ;  not  an  individual,  but  a  family  and  a  people. 
The  state,  as  the  consequence  and  formal  expression  of 
this  human  relationship,  is  always  derivative,  not  primary. 

This  obvious  distinction  may  furnish  the  clue  also  to  a 
right  answer  to  the  much  debated  question.  From  whence 
does  the  state  derive  its  authority?  According  to  two 
different  theories  which  liave  been  entertained,  the  state 
receives  its  functions  and  power  from  the  consent  of  the 
people,  or  directly  from  God.  But  neither  of  these  theories 
follows  a  careful  historical  induction  of  the  facts  which 
appear  in  the  actual  emergence  of  organized  states  from 
archaic  social  conditions.  The  idea  of  a  social  contract  at 
the  foundation  of  government  is  a  theory  long  since 
exploded  by  more  careful  historical  studies  concerning 
the  rise  and  growth  of  states.  No  known  social  contract 
lies  at  the  foundation  of  any  organized  society.^  Civil 
constitutions,  it  is  true,  may  have  been  made  and  ratified 
by  the  consent  of  the  people ;  but  some  government,  some 
form  of  social  organization,  antedates  all  historical  compacts. 

If  it  be  maintained,  on  the  other  hand,  that  government 
derives  its  authority  immediately  from  God,  then  the  ques- 
tions remain  to  be  answered,  What  is  the  nature  or  extent 
of  that  authority?  Who  are  commissioned  to  exercise  it? 
Under  what  forms  is  it  manifested?  Grant  that  all  author- 
ity proceeds  ultimately  from  God,  or  that  all  power  in  its 
essential  nature  is  moral  power  secured  in  the  ethical  being 
of  God,  the  further  and  practical  problem  is.  What  are 
the  social  relations  which  constitute  the  proper  materials 
for  organization  in  the  state,  and  by  what  processes,  or 
under  what  forms,  shall  these  social  relations  receive  author- 
itative embodiment,  and  find  commanding  expression  ? 

In  accordance  Avith  the  distinction  just  noticed,  we 
should  define  the  state  in  its  general  idea  as  the  organiza- 

1  If  it  1)6  said  that  this  theory  is  not  advanced  as  an  aoconnt  of  the  rise  of 
states,  but  as  the  true  idea  of  what  the  state  should  be,  we  reply  that  ideals  are 
suspicious  which  are  not  historically  evolved. 


SPHERES   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN    IDEAL  265 

tion  of  the  social  human  relations,  and  the  authoritative 
expression  of  the  rights  and  duties  which  are  involved  in 
these  objective  human  relations  of  men  to  one  another, 
deriving  its  sanctions  from  their  truth,  and  having  worth 
so  far  as  it  realizes  harmoniously  these  relations.  The  state 
is  thus  to  be  conceived  of  as  organized  society,  whose 
authority  is  the  authority  of  the  whole  over  the  parts,  and 
wdiose  function  it  is  to  secure  the  harmony  of  all  the 
constituent  parts  in  an  outward  order  of  social  life.  The 
authority  of  the  state,  therefore,  is  derived  immediately 
from  the  moral  value  of  the  social  relations  which  it  organ- 
izes. If  these  are  worthless,  if  these  are  not  to  be  guarded 
and  developed,  the  state  is  an  assumption,  and  all  organic 
laws  an  illusion.  But  if  these  primal  relations  of  humanity 
have  moral  worth  and  are  to  be  brought  to  their  highest 
possible  realization,  then  the  state  is  invested  with  their 
ethical  authority,  and  is  itself  an  ethical  end ;  and  also,  like 
the  family,  it  will  be  an  ethical  means  for  further  realiza- 
tion of  the  moral  ideal. 

Such  being  its  immediate  moral  worth,  it  possesses,  also, 
whatever  divine  sanction  and  authority  may  be  shown  to 
reside  in  the  original  social  relations  which  are  brought 
into  organic  unity  through  the  state.  So  far  as  the  matter, 
if  one  may  so  speak,  of  the  state  is  of  divine  origination 
and  sanctity,  the  state  also  exists  in  that  divine  right  and 
power.  Holding  as  we  do  to  the  divine  constitution  of 
humanity,  we  must  also  maintain  the  derivative  divineness 
of  the  organization  of  a  people  in  a  state. 

This  view  of  the  state  includes  the  truths,  and  escapes 
the  confusions,  both  of  naturalistic  theories  of  the  state, 
and  of  the  once  prevalent  idea,  also,  of  the  divine  right  cf 
kings.  It  excludes  what  is  unhistorical  and  hurtful  in 
those  views.  It  includes  the  truth  of  man's  solidarity, 
which  struggles  for  recognition  through  various  socialistic 
theories  of  government,  while  it  excludes  the  frequent 
socialistic  error  of  regarding  the  state  as  having  in  itself 
6ome  right  or  power  by  means  of  which  it  may  determine 
all  individual  relations  of  men.  This  view  excludes  also 
the  superficial  reasoning  that  the  state  is  nothing  but  the 


266  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

collective  power  of  the  peo23le,  under  the  limitation  of  the 
law  of  equal  freedom  indeed,  but  destitute  of  any  right  or 
authority  save  that  gained  by  compact  or  consent,  —  the 
extreme  individualistic  and  unhistoric  reduction  to  a  mini- 
mum of  the  obligations  which  social  classes  owe  to  each 
other  in  the  state.  We  recognize  the  deeper  and  diviner 
trutli  that  there  are  social  relations,  determining  rights  and 
involving  duties,  which  exist  before  any  individual  choice, 
and  lie  beneath  all  civil  contracts,  and  have  in  themselves 
the  ethical  worth  and  divine  authority  of  a  moral  creation 
for  a  moral  end.  "  The  state,"  says  Dorner,  "like  wedlock, 
is  neither  immediately  God's  work,  nor  something  profane, 
but  it  is  a  human  product  on  divine  ground,  and  so  has  in 
itself  a  divine  and  a  human  side."^  In  this  conception 
we  may  find  also  the  right  mean  between  the  absolute 
theory  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  state,  which  Hobbes  in- 
culcated, and  the  liberalistic  view  of  the  state  represented 
by  Locke.  The  proper  field  and  true  limits  of  the  sov- 
ereignty of  the  state  can  be  determined  by  this  derivation 
of  its  primal  authority  from  the  human  social  relations, 
with  their  implied  rights  and  duties,  which  existed  before 
the  organization  of  the  state,  and  which  cannot  be  super- 
seded by  the  state.  The  sovereign  state  differs  from  all 
other  forms  of  social  organization,  from  any  merely  indi- 
vidual associations  of  men,  in  the  fact  that  it  is  the  sole 
comprehensive,  organic  form  of  human  relationships ;  and 
as  such,  having  been  immediately  derived  from  these  rela- 
tions, and  being  the  original,  formal  principle  for  the  social 
material,  the  state  is  set  over  all  other  societies,  and  holds 
authoritative  primacy  among  them. 

The  limitations  also  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  state  are 
given  in  the  same  primary,  social  relations  from  which  its 
authority  is  derived.  The  sovereignty,  and  the  limitations 
of  the  sovereignty,  are  alike  determined  in  the  same  social 
constitution  of  humanity.  The  state  has  sovereignty  to 
conserve,  and  to  bring  to  free  realization  these  primal, 
social  relations  of  men ;  it  has  no  sovereignty  to  destroy 

^  System  der  Christ.  Sittenlehre,  s.  509. 


SPHERES    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  267 

them.  By  any  invasion  of  the  human  rights  from  which 
it  derives  its  authority,  it  would  cut  itself  off  from  its  own 
source  of  authority.  It  would  by  so  doing  contradict 
itself.  It  has  sovereignty  only  in  its  fidelity  to  the  life 
from  which  it  comes,  in  its  constant  truth  to  the  relations 
of  that  life  which  it  organizes  and  legalizes.  Whenever, 
therefore,  the  state  assumes  power  to  destroy  essential  and 
integral  functions  of  the  lives  of  individuals,  it  violates 
its  own  law,  and  in  behalf  of  its  rightful  authority  it  is  to 
be  resisted.  In  other  words,  the  law  of  the  whole  body 
finds  both  its  authority  and  its  limits  in  the  relations  of  the 
parts  which  it  is  to  hold  together  as  members  one  of  an- 
other through  its  organizing  and  regulative  power. 

The  limitations  of  the  possible  activity,  as  well  as  of. 
the  sovereignty  of  the  state,  for  the  supposed  general  wel- 
fare, may  likewise  be  found  in  this  conception  of  the  nature 
of  the  state.  The  state  is  constituted,  so  it  is  argued  by 
one  school  of  publicists,  in  the  idea  of  right,  and  in  that 
idea  only ;  it  can  exercise  consequently  no  authority  over 
human  affairs,  except  within  the  limits  of  that  one  consti- 
tutive principle.  To  protect  men  in  certain  rights  is  the 
sole  and  entire  function  of  the  state.  This  theory  Lassalle 
ridiculed  as  the  "  night-watchman  "  idea  of  the  state.  The 
power  of  the  state  is  reduced  to  a  scanty  figure  when  the 
conception  of  it  is  exhausted  in  the  person  of  a  police- 
man. But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  paternal  idea  of  the 
state  has  been  carried  to  the  socialistic  extreme.  The 
function  of  the  state  seems  to  be  expanded  beyond  all 
reason  when  it  is  conceived  of  as  a  guardian  angel,  which 
is  to  accompany  and  direct,  with  perpetual  oversight,  indi- 
vidual efforts  and  pursuits.  The  fallacy  in  both  these 
conflicting  conceptions  concerning  the  extent  of  the  func- 
tions of  the  state,  resides  in  their  failure  to  determine 
inductively  what  are  the  primary  social  relations  which 
constitute  the  proper  material  to  be  organized  under  the 
formative  authority  of  the  state.  The  scope  and  the  limi- 
tations of  governmental  action  and  non-interference  are  to 
be  found  in  the  nature  of  those  primary  human  relations 
which  lend,  and  which  do  not  lend,  themselves  to  organi- 


268  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

zation  and  administration  through  law  and  under  the  forms 
of  legal  institutions.  Nor  is  it  difficult  in  general  to  draw 
the  line  of  demarcation  through  all  these  human  relations 
between  what  is  proper  material  for,  and  what  lies  be- 
yond the  organizing  power  of  the  state.  It  is  determined 
by  the  distinction  between  that  which  is  immediately  per- 
sonal, and  only  indirectly  social  on  the  one  hand,  and  that 
which  is  directly  social  and  indirectly  personal  on  the 
other  hand.  Activities,  which  are  immediately  the  con- 
cerns of  free  personal  life,  can  become  only  secondarily, 
and  as  they  affect  others,  affairs  of  society,  and  hence  mat- 
ter of  social  organization  through  the  power  of  the  state. 
Functions,  on  the  other  hand,  Avhich  are  directly  social, 
and  which  react  on  the  individual  freedom,  are  the  imme- 
diate matter  of  society,  and  hence  of  organization  under 
the  laws  of  the  state.  This  distinction  indeed  is  not  abso- 
lute, as  all  life  is  at  once  individual  and  social ;  but, 
broadly  speaking,  this  distinction  marks  off  with  practical 
plainness  the  one  side  of  life,  which  the  state  should  lay 
hold  of  for  its  legitimate  ends,  from  the  other  side  of  life, 
which  properly  escapes  from  the  control  of  the  state. 
Practical  statesmanship  must  judge  in  each  particular 
instance  of  proposed  legislation  just  where  this  distinction 
runs.  Practical  ethics  in  politics  will  incline  to  the  night- 
watchman  or  to  the  paternal  idea  of  government,  accord- 
ing to  the  nature  and  range  of  the  social  relations  and 
activities  which  it  may  be  proposed  to  bring  within  the 
domain  of  positive  law.  Substantially  the  same  distinc- 
tion will  be  gained,  if  we  consider  the  end  of  the  state  as 
a  sphere  of  action  in  which  the  moral  ideal  is  to  be  brought 
to  still  further  realization.  For  that  moral  end  or  that 
part  of  the  moral  good  which  can  be  realized  through  the 
organization  of  the  human  social  relations  in  the  civil 
body,  will  also  define  its  proper  sphere  of  activity,  while 
those  parts  of  the  moral  good  which  do  not  admit  of  real- 
ization throupfh  social  orgfanization  in  the  state  will  deter- 
mine  the  limits  of  its  functions.  Those  human  relations 
which  are  usually  designated  under  the  term,  the  rights  of 
men,  belong  to  that  portion  of  the  social  good  which  is  to 


SPHERES    OF   THE    CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  269 

be  realized  through  the  state.  Further,  man}^  activities  of 
men  in  common  enterprises  and  for  aims  of  a  common 
prosperity  which  cannot  be  reached  through  private  efforts, 
at  least  not  so  well,  may  be  included  in  a  social  ideal  which 
must  be  sought  through  combined  efforts ;  and  conse- 
quently they  may  constitute  an  organic  end  for  the  state, 
and  hence  open  a  field  for  the  possible  exercise  of  its 
power.  But  here  the  line  begins  to  shade  off,  and  only  a 
careful  induction  of  facts  can  determine  in  many  instances, 
what  are  elements  of  the  moral  good  beyond  the  reach  of 
individual  enterprise,  but  within  possible  attainment  by 
the  social  body  as  an  organic  whole.  If  the  end  of  the 
state  be  defined  indeed  in  terms  simply  of  right,  and  not 
in  an  ideal  conception  of  that  portion  of  human  welfare 
which  may  be  attained  through  legal  organization ;  then, 
of  course,  any  socialistic  action  of  the  state  would  be 
necessarily  excluded.  But  a  profounder  and  more  historic 
conception  of  the  end  of  the  state,  which  includes  within 
its  legitimate  province  such  human  welfare  as  cannot  be 
realized  except  through  social  organization  and  under  col- 
lective forms,  will  not  refuse  to  admit  any  socialistic  legis- 
lation which  experience  may  prove  to  be  conducive  to  the 
good  of  the  whole,  while  not  destructive  of  the  primary 
individual  relations  and  functions  of  human  life  and  ac- 
tivity.i 

From  the  view  of  the  origin  and  nature  of  the  state 
which  we  have  thus  gained,  the  answer  becomes  apparent 
to  the  further  question  hoAv  far  the  state  may  be  regarded, 
as  the  puritan  poet  conceived  of  it,  "  as  one  huge  Christian 
personage,  one  mighty  growth  or  stature  of  an  honest 
man  "  ?  Milton's  moral  conception  of  the  state  would 
be  disputed  by  the  school  of  laissez  faire  economists  who 

1  Paulsen  suggests  that  a  reconciliation  of  conflicting  theories  of  the  func- 
tions of  the  state  may  he  found  in  a  real  as  distinguished  from  a  formal  con- 
ception of  freedom;  that  is,  "  the  real  possihility  for  every  individual  to  live 
as  an  end  to  himself,"  etc.  {System  der  Ethlk,  s.  801).  So  far  as  the  regulation 
of  social  relations  by  the  state  may  be  necessary  in  order  that  individual  free- 
dom in  its  real  contents,  as  well  as  formal  idea,  may  be  attained,  the  state  is 
more  than  an  institution  of  rights.  On  tlie  formal  nature  and  the  necessary 
limits  of  the  productive  activity  of  the  state,  see  also  some  excellent  remarks 
in  Hoffding's  Ethik,  ss.  431  ff. 


270  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

find  the  sole  occasion  and  only  legitimate  scope  for  civil 
government  in  the  necessity  of  protecting  equal  freedom 
and  securing  the  stability  of  contracts.  But  Milton's 
conception  has  this  advantage  over  these  economists,  that 
it  is  historical,  and  is  true  to  the  ideas  of  the  state  which 
have  become  embodied  in  the  modern  nations.  As  matter 
of  fact,  nations  are  moral  personalities,  having  ethical 
character,  and  holding  themselves  under  moral  responsi- 
bilities. Their  ethical  ideas  may  be  imperfect  and  the 
government  of  a  people  may  often  fail  to  correspond  as  it 
ishould  to  the  moral  spirit  of  the  people ;  nevertheless,  a 
•certain  moral  individuality  characterizes  each  nation,  and 
is  worked  out  in  its  history.  To  deny  ethical  quality  to 
the  state  would  be  to  rob  it  of  that  character  which  often, 
more  than  all  external  possession  or  might,  has  held  the 
devotion  of  the  people,  and  been  the  inspiration  of  the 
highest  patriotism.  The  spirit  of  a  nation,  pervading  its 
institutions  and  revealing  its  power  in  the  great  crises  of 
its  history,  constitutes  and  consecrates  the  true  moral  per- 
sonality of  the- nation.  While  Milton's  conception  holds 
true  of  the  actual  state  as  it  is  known  in  history,  the  oppo- 
site idea  of  a  merely  legal  machine,  devoid  of  soul,  and 
without  moral  responsibility,  is  an  invention  of  publicists 
—  a  mere  idol  of  the  school  —  which  has  never  had  actual 
existence  in  the  world. 

The  moral  character  of  a  state  results  directly  from  the 
ethical  nature  of  the  social  relations  which  are  to  be  organ- 
ized and  adjusted  in  the  constitution  and  laws  of  the  civil 
body.  For  these  are  relations  of  men  to  men,  and  as  such 
are  more  than  economic  harmonies,  and  cannot  be  emptied 
of  moral  reality.  The  social  tissue,  in  other  words,  which 
exists  to  be  worked  up  in  some  organic  form  of  civil  gov- 
ernment, is  moral  tissue,  composed  not  only  of  economic 
fibres  and  fatty  material  of  wealth,  but  also  of  vital  ele- 
ments, and  the  quick  nerves  of  human  sympathies  and 
reciprocities.  Since  the  social  tissue  itself  contains  moral 
elements,  and  is  ethical  so  far  as  it  is  living  human  tissue, 
any  further  organization  and  correlations  of  it  in  civil  con- 
stitutions and  laws  must  possess  essentially  the  same  moral 


SPHERES    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  271 

character  as  the  original  substance  from  which  such  insti- 
tutions are  formed. 

The  moral  character  of  the  state  is  also  to  be  affirmed 
when  we  consider  the  ends  for  which  the  state  exists. 
Even  on  the  most  tenuous  theory  of  its  aim,  —  that  of  the 
maintenance  of  free  contracts,  —  some  moral  character  can 
hardly  be  denied  to  the  state  ;  for  it  must  have  virtue 
enough  at  least  to  recognize  the  maintenance  of  free  con- 
tracts as  a  good,  or  at  least  as  a  necessary  means  to  the 
sum  of  individual  happiness,  which  is  regarded  as  the  good 
to  be  desired.  If,  however,  our  theories  go  farther  and 
correspond  to  the  actually  existent  forms  of  civil  organi- 
zations of  society,  they  will  include  in  their  scope  such 
moral  ideas  as  governments  practically  attempt  to  real- 
ize, not  onl}^  in  the  maintenance  of  certain  formal  rights 
for  the  individual,  but  also  in  the  creation  of  those  social 
conditions  which  are  necessary  for  the  development  of  his 
free  personality,  or  conducive  to  his  attainment  of  the  per- 
sonal and  material  welfare  which  is  the  aim  and  end  of  his 
being. 

Ethics,  therefore,  must  include  as  a  part  of  its  science 
the  problems  of  moral  statesmanship.  Christian  politics  is 
a  part  of  Christian  ethics. 

Recognizing  thus  the  fact  that  governments  have  moral 
responsibilities,  and  consequently  that  political  questions 
may  fall  within  the  province  of  Christian  ethics,  we  have 
further  to  inquire  whether  the  state  may  also  be  said  to 
have  religious  character  and  aims ;  whether  in  Christian 
ethics  the  state  may  be  regarded  also  as  a  Christian 
institution. 

A  definite  religious  character  of  the  state  cannot  be 
inferred  directly  from  its  possession  of  moral  functions  or 
aims,  unless,  indeed,  we  confuse  moral  and  religious  ideas. 
We  must  admit  the  possibility  in  the  individual  of  a  moral 
development  which  may  not  be  consciously  or  formally 
religious,  whatever  religious  implications  we  may  hold  are 
latent  in  any  moral  growth.^  So  the  life  of  a  people  may 
be  conceived  as  taking  on  moral  functions  and  realizing 
1  See  above,  p.  16. 


272  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

certain  moral  ends  without  coming  to  distinct  religious 
consciousness,  or  acquiring  definite  Christian  character. 
But  as  the  life  of  the  individual  cannot  come  to  its  full 
moral  attainment  without  some  disclosure  of  his  religious 
being  and  end,  so  the  organization  of  the  collective  life  of 
a  people  in  the  state  involves  eventually  some  realization 
of  the  religious  consciousness  of  a  people,  and  a  social 
order  which  shall  exist  in  some  acknowledged  relationship 
to  the  higher  law  of  heaven.  Historically,  the  nations 
have  had  their  religions.  The  ancient  peoples  had  their 
state  religions ;  and  Rome  under  its  most  moral  emperor, 
Marcus  Aurelius,  could  persecute  an  illicit  religion.  And 
when,  as  in  some  modern  states,  the  civil  and  religious 
functions  are  kept  separate,  the  state,  nevertheless,  recog- 
nizes the  existence  of  religion  and  seeks  to  adapt  and 
harmonize  its  constitution  and  laws  to  the  religion,  or 
religions  of  the  people. 

What  the  more  specific  obligations  of  the  state  to  re- 
ligion may  be,  we  reserve  for  subsequent  discussion;  —  in 
this  chapter  we  are  laying  foundations  for  the  succeeding 
chapter  on  duties.  We  maintain  now  in  general  that  a 
certain  religious  relation  and  character  must  eventually 
distinguish  the  developed  state ;  a  general  Christian  spirit 
and  temper  must  distinguish  the  state  which  is  organized 
in  the  consciousness  of  a  Christian  people,  so  that  the  fur- 
ther and  special  marks,  functions,  and  obligations  of  this 
religious  character  of  the  state  may  properly  be  made  mat- 
ters for  inquiry  and  determination  in  Christian  ethics. 

It  should  be  noticed  that  this  whole  question,  whether  a  state  may 
have  a  religion,  is  a  modern  question.  It  was  unknown  in  the  ancient 
cities  and  would  not  have  been  raised  by  Aristotle  or  Plato.  The  state, 
or  the  city,  being  according  to  the  ancient  conception  supreme  —  the  one 
sphere  of  life  inclusive  of  and  sovereign  over  all  others  —  there  could  be 
no  conceivable  development  of  human  life  outside  of  the  state  and  foreign 
to  it.  Hence,  since  man  is  a  religious  as  well  as  social  animal,  the  state 
must  to  some  extent  express  and  regulate  his  religious  as  well  as  his 
social  nature.  Similarly  Hobbes  represents  the  state  as  having  jurisdic- 
tion over  religion  by  reason  of  its  sole  supremacy  over  all  the  spheres  of 
life  ;  the  state,  as  sovereign,  should  prescribe  the  order  of  worship,  and 
the  individual  may  rightly  hold  no  religion,  or  no  public  form  of  religion, 
except  in  harmony  with  and  by  means  of  the  provided  religious  order  of 


SPHERES    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  273 

the  state.  There  can  be  no  king  but  Caesar  ;  a  worship  outside  the  order 
of  the  state,  or  an  assertion  of  individual  allegiance  to  any  higher  power 
than  the  state  allows,  is  not  to  be  tolerated,  for  it  is  subversive  of  the 
sovereignty  of  the  state,  to  be  extermmated,  therefore,  through  j)ersecu- 
tion  by  the  emperors.  Polycarp,  who  cannot  swear  by  Csesar  as  Lord, 
must  drink  the  cup  of  martyrdom. 

Christianity  created  an  empire  within  an  empire,  raised  a  Christian 
sovereignty  above  all  human  allegiance,  and  refused  to  place  its  spiritual 
kingdom  at  the  command  of  the  powers  of  this  world.  Christianity 
requires  that  the  state  in  its  functions  and  aims  shall  recognize  and  make 
room  for  the  good  which  is  its  ideal,  and  which  it  is  striving  to  make  real 
on  this  earth.  It  refuses  to  be  subject  in  its  ideals  and  spiritual  loyalties 
to  the  state,  while  at  the  same  time  it  strives  unceasingly  to  embody  its 
spirit  in  the  laws,  and  to  reflect  its  moral  light  m  the  institutions  and 
administrations  of  civil  government. 


The  task  of  ethicizing  and  Christianizing  all  civil  insti- 
tutions is  the  practical  politics  of  Christian  faith.  Politics 
is  more  in  Christian  ethics  than  it  was,  or  could  have  been, 
in  Aristotle's  discussion  of  the  forms  of  government,  or 
even  in  Plato's  dream  of  the  republic.  For  we  are  called  by 
the  existing  status  of  governments,  as  well  as  by  the  voice 
of  their  history,  and  the  hopes  of  their  future,  to  consider 
what  civil  institutions  and  what  laws  shall  best  answer  the 
Christian  possibilities  of  the  life  of  a  people,  and  bring  to 
clearer  and  happier  actualization  the  idea  of  the  Christian 
society  which  goes  before  our  civilization.  It  is  not  merely 
some  ideal  form  of  possible  human  government,  whether 
of  constitutional  monarchy  or  democracy,  but  it  is  the 
ideal  of  a  Christian  society  to  be  realized  on  earth,  which 
is  the  large,  inspiring  idea  of  the  progress  of  the  Cliristian 
nations.  Each  state  in  the  Christian  world,  under  the 
influence  of  Christian  ideas,  as  it  strives  however  imper- 
fectly to  realize  in  its  sphere  the  Christian  life  of  the  peo- 
ple, is  compelled  to  go  beyond  and  beneath  all  formal 
questions  concerning  its  institutions,  and  to  seek  to  steep 
its  laws  in  Christian  ethics.  And  beyond  the  ethicizing  of 
individual  states,  and  the  reception  by  them  of  the  baptism 
of  the  Spirit  of  Christian  history,  the  further  problem 
remains  of  Christianizinof  the  relations  of  the  nations  to 
one  another,  or  the  Christian  ethicization  of  international 
law. 


274  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

The  mutual  relations  of  states  are  no  longer  to  be  deter- 
mined simply  by  commercial  interests,  nor  can  their  reci- 
procities remain  entirely  economic,  and  different  peoples 
meet  each  other  only  with  their  tariffs  at  the  world's  com- 
mon commercial  table.  The  contacts  between  nations  are 
also  ethical,  and  their  religions  as  well  as  their  commerce 
meet  on  every  shore.  The  world  is  becoming  a  general 
assembly  of  those  "huge  moral  personages"  of  Milton's 
noble  conception.  As  these  international  relations  become 
means  thus  of  moral  and  spiritual  communion  between 
peopleSj  international  laws  also  should  become  more  power- 
fully representative  of  these  higher  moral  reciprocities,  and 
express  ultimately  the  world's  most  ethical  cosmopolitan 
consciousness.  Without  forfeiting  their  identity,  or  losing 
their  national  individuality,  the  kingdoms  of  this  world 
are  called  to  become,  in  the  spirit  of  their  international 
laws,  the  kingdom  of  the  Lord  and  his  Christ. 

§  3.   THE  SPHERE  OF  THE  CHURCH 

From  the  ethical  point  of  view,  the  Church  is  to  be 
regarded  as  an  embodiment,  in  some  measure,  of  the  Chris- 
tian Ideal,  —  a  partial  attainment  already  on  earth  of  the 
highest  good;  and  also,  by  its  imperfect  realization  of  the 
Christian  Ideal,  it  presents  further  ethical  problems  which 
are  to  be  worked  out  in  the  history  of  the  Church  to  better 
solutions. 

1.    The  formative  ethical  idea  of  the  Church. 

Jesus  came  preaching  the  gospel  of  the  kingdom  of  God ; 
he  looked  upon  that  kingdom  not  merely  as  something  to 
come  from  heaven  at  some  future  day,  but  as  a  kingdom 
already  begun  in  the  company  of  his  disciples.  The  apos- 
tolic institution  of  churches  was  the  continuation  and  ful- 
filment of  Jesus'  teaching  concerning  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
on  earth.  That  kingdom  was  in  some  sense  already  come  in 
the  first  Christian  Church.  Its  full  idea  was  far  from  reali- 
zation ;  the  kingdom  had  not  fully  or  finally  come  in  the 
imperfect  beginnings  of  the  Christian  Church ;  but  in  the 
Church  of  Christ  the  kingdom  of  heaven  had  become  an 
established  fact    on    earth,    and,  however   imperfectly,    it 


SPHERES    OF    THE   CHRISTIAN    IDEAL  275 

showed  that  there  was  a  real  presence  of  the  Spirit  in  a 
communion  of  believers. 

The  Church,  therefore,  as  the  coming  of  the  kingdom,  is 
to  be  a  visible  embodiment  of  its  Spirit,  the  organized  and 
institutional  presentation  on  earth  of  its  gospel.  Espe- 
cially are  the  ethics  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  both  indi- 
vidual and  social,  to  be  made  real  and  controlling  in  the 
Christian  Church. 

In  this  idea  of  the  Church  as  the  ethical  realization,  as 
well  as  religious  continuation,  of  the  gospel  of  the  kingdom, 
the  following  particulars  are  involved :  — 

(1)  The  Church  is  to  be  composed  of  Christian  persons. 
Christian  individuals,  making  personal  confession  of  the 
Christ,  are  the  units  of  whom  the  Church  is  organized. 
The  Christian  person  is  the  constituent  unit  of  the  Church. 

(2)  Christ  is  himself  the  central  and  supreme  principle 
of  the  Church.  It  is  to  be  organized  around  Him.  It  is 
constituted  in  Him.  It  is  the  body  of  which  He  is  the 
head.  No  company  of  disciples  by  themselves  constitute 
a  church.  Not  unless  Christ  is  in  the  midst  of  his  disciples 
does  the  Church  exist. 

(3)  In  the  Church  is  presented  the  Christian  idea  of 
society.  The  individuals  who  constitute  the  organic  units 
of  the  Church  are  bound  tosrether,  throuo-h  their  union 
with  Christ,  in  a  renewed  society.  The  social  relations 
between  men,  and  classes  of  men,  take  on  new  forms,  are 
pervaded  by  another  spirit,  and  begin  to  assume  a  higher 
completeness  in  the  communion  of  the  body  of  Christ. 
The  Church  stands  thus  for  the  idea  of  a  req-enerated 
society.  Its  present  existence  is  the  Christian  pledge  of 
the  future  perfected  Christian  society.  So  far  as  the 
Church  has  made  real  the  gospel  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
on  earth,  it  is  more  than  the  sign  of  individual  election  or 
salvation,  and  more  than  a  prophecy  also  of  some  heavenly 
world ;  it  is,  or  should  be,  the  embodiment  and  presentation 
in  flesh  and  blood  among  men  of  the  true  Christian  idea  of 
social  life. 

(4)  The  society,  which  is  already  partially  formed,  and 
which  is  still  further  prophesied  in  the  Church,  is  consti- 


276  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

tuted  in  a  higher  or  gracious  power.  It  is  a  society  organ- 
ized from  above,  and  having  its  life  in  a  power  which  it 
receives  from  above.  It  is  not  a  spontaneous  generation, 
or  self-organization  of  humanity.  It  is  a  new  birth  of 
humanity  by  the  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  The  Church, 
as  the  embodiment  of  the  Christian  idea  of  society,  is 
itself  the  creation  of  the  Christian  principle  of  life.  It  is 
organized  in  the  name  of  Christ,  and  by  the  power  of  his 
Spirit,  as  the  morally  true  society  in  which  all  social  rela- 
tions are  to  find  normal  development,  reach  perfect  adjust- 
ment and  harmony,  and  escajDe  from  the  waste  and  destruc- 
tion of  sin.  It  is  a  human  brotherhood  proceeding  from 
the  divine  Fatherhood.  It  is  a  human  society  inspired  by 
a  common  love ;  and  that  love,  which  is  its  unity,  is  essen- 
tially religious.  It  is  love  from  God  and  to  God,  in  which 
the  love  also  of  one's  neighbor  has  its  birth  and  life.  The 
Church  stands  thus  as  the  gracious  (and  hence  most 
natural)  form  of  human  society,  —  the  true  society,  that 
is,  which  has  its  life  in  God.  The  Church  represents 
human  society  in  the  highest.     Ideally  it  does  this. 

Hence  the  formative  ethical  conception  of  the  Church 
(not  considering  now  its  ecclesiastical  organization)  may 
be  broadly  and  briefly  described  as  the  Christian  social 
ideal.  A  renewed  and  perfected  society  of  men  is  the 
idea  to  be  embodied,  progressively  realized,  and  finally 
perfected  in  the  Church  of  the  Son  of  man. 

The  expectation  of  the  Church  —  the  ideal  ever  shining 
before  it  —  is  the  vision  of  the  city  of  God.  This  ideal 
of  a  perfected  Christian  society  has  risen  before  the  build- 
ers and  founders  of  churches ;  it  has  led  on  the  greatest 
movements  of  missionary  power ;  it  has  produced  reforma- 
tions within  the  Church ;  it  redeems  and  ennobles  pages  in 
church  history  which  otherwise  might  seem  dark,  narrovv^, 
and  intolerant.  The  Church  of  God  stands  always  before 
an  apocalypse.  It  gazes  into  a  sunset  glory.  And  the 
resplendence  of  its  vision  of  the  future  beautifies  and 
glorifies  much  that  is  imperfect  and  unattractive  in  its 
present.  As  a  landscape,  which  in  itself  may  not  seem 
attractive,  is  rendered  pleasing  to   the   eye,  —  even   the 


SPHERES   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN  IDEAL  277 

barren  wintry  fields,  the  misshapen  rocks,  the  homely 
farmyards,  and  the  storm-twisted  trees  of  a  northern  New 
England  country-side,  becoming  fair  and  bright,  as  one 
looks  over  them  into  a  sunset  glory,  and  the  warm  splen- 
dors of  the  sky  light  up  the  earth  beneath  it,  —  so  the 
puritanism  of  the  Church,  and  many  customs  and  tradi- 
tions in  themselves  unsightl}^  and  repulsive,  have  been 
dignified  and  made  lustrous  by  the  glory  of  the  ideal  in 
which  the  whole  seemed  to  be  transfigured.  It  is  unhis- 
toric  and  untrue  to  look  at  many  scenes  in  past  church  his- 
tory without  lifting  one's  eyes  to  the  idea  of  a  purer  and 
more  celestial  society  which  men,  unwisely  it  may  be,  and 
ineffectually,  but  nevertheless  with  hearts  looking  heaven- 
wards, have  sought  to  bring  down  to  this  world. 

There  has  been  in  recent  times  a  revival,  or  at  least  a 
clearer  and  intensified  conception,  of  this  ethical  idea  of 
the  Church  as  the  realization  in  the  world  of  the  true 
society.^  The  Church  in  its  ethical  idea  is  for  humanity. 
Individuals  may  belong  to  a  church  because  the  Church 
in  its  idea  belongs  to  all  men.  Like  the  Sabbath  the 
Church  was  made  for  man,  not  man  for  the  Church ;  for 
the  Son  of  man  is  Lord  also  of  the  Church,  as  he  is  of  the 
Sabbath.  The  Church  stands  for  a  human  good,  and  is 
essentially  an  institute  for  humanity.  As  such  the  Church 
is  not  to  be  regarded  simply  as  a  means  for  an  end,  a  useful 
means  for  an  end  of  human  redemption  beyond  itself ;  it 
is  itself  an  end.  So  far  as  in  the  Church  of  Christ  social 
relations  are  regenerated,  and  social  truth  has  been  em- 
bodied in  its  communion,  the  Church  is  a  moral  end,  and 
its  completion  becomes  a  part  of  the  attainment  of  the 
final  perfect  good  for  man. 

In  this  conception  of  it  the  Church  is  and  must  be  some- 
thing universal  in  its  scope  and  form.  For,  as  a  human 
end,  realizing  a  human  good,  the  Church  cannot  be  a  lim- 
ited or  particular  form  of  social  life,  a  temporary  and 
transitional  mode  of  human  life  ;  but  it  must  have  mean- 

1  This  conception  was  the  idea  of  the  Church  for  all  men  to  which  Frederick 
Denison  Maurice  was  drawn  with  a  resistless  attraction,  and  which  his  life 
and  writings  have  helped  restore  to  the  Christian  world. 


278  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

ing  and  Avortli  for  all  men  as  a  final  attainment  of  the  per- 
fect social  good.  The  universality  of  the  Church,  in  other 
words,  is  involved  in  its  original  and  formative  idea  as  the 
true  and  perfect  conception  of  a  human  fellowship  which 
shall  be  organized  in  the  communion  of  men  with  God. 
As  the  home  and  the  life  of  the  household  are  constituted 
in  the  relation  of  the  children  to  the  father,  so  the  Church 
is  tlie  oneness  of  men  in  God  ;  the  Christian  Church  is  the 
fellowship  of  humanity  in  the  communion  of  Christ  who 
makes  known  the  Father. 

Moreover,  as  an  end  in  itself,  as  a  part  of  the  summum 
honum  to  be  attained  in  the  perfected  life  of  humanity,  the 
Church  is  separated  from  all  merely  voluntary  associa- 
tions, and  from  any  transitory,  accidental,  or  convenient 
forms  of  social  life.  Its  authority  resides  in  the  essential 
good  which  is  involved  in  its  idea  —  the  good  for  man, 
ordained  of  God,  which  is  to  be  attained  and  revealed  in 
and  through  the  Church.  Its  reason  for  being  is  given  in 
the  moral  truth  that  human  society  is  to  be  constituted 
after  a  divine  order.  The  Church  is,  and  must  be,  because 
God  is,  and  man,  made  in  a  divine  image,  can  reach  his 
highest  end  only  in  a  humanity  which  shall  be  perfected 
through  the  Spirit  of  God.  We  need  not  therefore  seek 
for  the  social  warrant  and  authority  of  the  Church  in  the 
letter  of  any  Scripture,  or  search  for  its  living  foundations 
simply  in  some  historic  word  of  Christian  institution.  It 
is  necessarily  and  supremely  the  continuation  of  the  work 
of  the  Son  of  man,  who  is  the  Son  of  God.  It  is  essential 
to  His  humanity  that  it  shall  complete  itself  in  the  true 
humanity  of  all  his  brethren.  It  is  essential  to  his  per- 
fected union  with  the  Father  that  he  shall  give  his  Spirit 
to  the  Church  which  is  his  body.  The  Church  is  thus  the 
natural  and  continuous  manifestation  of  the  divine  hu- 
manity of  Christ. 

It  follows  further  that  the  Church,  as  a  part  of  the 
human  good  to  be  realized,  and  hence  as  a  universal  form 
for  human  life,  is  not  to  be  bound  by  particular  modes  of 
confession  or  orders  of  administration.  Without  loss  of 
its  inward  principle  it  may  take  different  forms,  and  assume 


SPHERES   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN    IDEAL  279 

varied  adaptations  among  different  peoples  according  to 
the  spirit  and  genius  of  different  nationalities.^  In  its 
principle  the  Church  is  for  all  nations  ;  the  forms  of  its 
ceremonial  may  depend  in  part  upon  the  climate.  Na- 
tional genius  may  enter  as  a  determinative  factor  in  its 
order  and  administration.  The  civil  institutions  of  a  coun- 
try ma}^  modify  the  constitution  of  the  Church  and  give 
shape  and  color  to  its  ecclesiastical  law.  An  idea,  which 
is  in  itself  universal,  may  become  localized,  and  be  known 
by  local  signs  and  emblems.  Patriotism,  which  is  a  human 
sentiment,  may  follow  different  flags  in  different  countries ; 
and  even  in  the  same  country,  under  the  one  national  ban- 
ner, patriotism  may  be  intensified  by  attachment  to  a 
corps  badge  or  the  regimental  colors.  Indeed  universal 
truths  need  often  to  take  on  local  form  and  color  in  order 
to  command  men  with  full  devotion.  But  under  these 
special  forms,  and  even  denominational  colors,  the  idea  of 
the  Church  as  a  universal  truth  for  man  is  not  necessarily 
contradicted,  and  should  never  be  lost.  The  deadly  sin  of 
schism  lies  ethically,  not  in  anj^  non-conformity,  nor  in 
independency  of  some  existing  church  organization,  but 
in  the  contradiction  either  in  spirit,  or  by  ecclesiastical 
methods,  of  the  universality  of  the  idea  of  the  Church. 
Denial  of  this  universality  of  the  Church  may  be  n:iade 
not  only  by  a  schismatic  spirit,  but  also  by  a  refusal  to 
admit  the  law  of  development  in  the  Church.  For,  if  the 
Church  in  its  idea  is  universal,  then  in  its  historic  form  it 
must  manifest  growth  ;  it  will  be  a  progressive  realization 
of  the  idea  of  the  kingdom  of  God ;  and  its  life  will  show 
a  law  and  power  of  true  development.  To  contradict  this 
truth  of  its  development  is  to  deny  the  ethical  fitness  of 
the  Church  for  a  final  and  universal  human  good.  To 
hold  the  idea  of  the  Church  in  absolute  identification 
with  any  existing  order,  or  outward  form  which  it  has 
historically  assumed,  would  involve  a  denial  of  the  vital 
principle  of  its  possible  development  into  universality. 

1  This  does  not  touch  the  ecclesiastical  question  concerning  any  alleged 
signs  of  its  outward  historic  continuity  —  a  question  beyond  our  present 
province. 


280  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

The  reality  of  the  Church  on  earth  is  always  something 
partial  and  limited ;  its  idea  is  always  something  catholic. 
The  Church  in  its  actuality  is  a  definite  number  of  men 
living  and  working  together  in  a  partially  renewed  soci- 
ety ;  the  Church  in  its  ideal  is  a  universal  humanity,  re- 
deemed and  harmonized  in  the  unity  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven. 

This  universality  of  the  idea  of  the  Church  proceeds 
directly  from  the  nature  of  its  Lord  as  the  Christ  for  the 
world.  It  comprehends  human  life  in  all  its  activities  and 
relations,  for  the  catholic  Church  is  to  be  the  Church  of 
the  Son  of  man.  There  can  be  but  one  universal  Church, 
as  there  can  be  but  one  true  realization  of  the  idea  of  soci- 
ety, even  the  Christian  society.  All  churches,  established, 
national,  denominational,  belong  to  the  one  true  Church 
only  as  they  share  in,  and  reflect,  and  are  becoming  con- 
tributary  to,  this  one  final  and  perfect  form  of  the  Chris- 
tian society  whose  head  is  the  Christ. 

This  universality  of  the  Church,  even  in  its  final  per- 
fectness,  may  not  necessarily  exclude  diversities  of  forms, 
but  it  will  comprehend  all  varieties  of  organization  in 
some  evident  and  controlling  imity  of  formative  principle 
and  spirit.  Though  having  many  members,  and  divers 
ministries,  the  Church  will  be  ultimately  one  body,  the 
redeemed  body  of  humanity,  of  which  Christ  is  the  head. 

The  nature  of  the  Church  as  the  religious  social  ideal, 
which  we  have  thus  been  considering,  will  serve  to  correct 
and  to  exalt  a  common,  but  low,  conception  of  the  social 
functions  of  the  churches  as  simply  a  means  of  good  fel- 
lowship among  men.  For  the  office  of  the  Church  is  not 
merely  to  minister  to  sociability,  as  many  voluntary 
associations  may  legitimately  do  ;  but  the  social  idea  of 
the  Church  goes  deeper  and  higher,  and  is  broader  than 
that;  it  is  its  aim  and  end  to  realize  the  true  form  of 
human  society,  and  to  manifest  in  its  fellowship  the  full, 
redeemed  social  life  of  man. 

2.  We  have  next  to  determine  the  relations  of  the 
Church  to  other  institutions  in  which  the  moral  ideal  is  to 
be  realized. 


SPHERES    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  281 

(1)  Its  superiority  to  all  voluntary  associations  for  the 
promotion  of  social  ends  has  just  been  noticed.  The 
Church  is  a  fundamental  form  or  essential  type  of  the 
Christian  society,  having  its  sanction  in  the  Christian  idea 
of  humanity  which  it  seeks  to  bring  to  progressive  real- 
ization. 

(2)  But  it  is  not  necessarily  exclusive  of  other  tempo- 
rary organizations,  which  may  be  useful  means  for  social 
ends.  The  Church,  as  embodying  in  itself  the  social  aims 
of  man,  may  justify,  consecrate,  and  use  as  means  to  the 
society  which  it  would  create  anew,  various  other  associa- 
tions, comradeships,  and  alliances  of  men.  Their  chief 
ethical  reason  for  being  lies  in  their  practical  justification 
as  means  to  the  end  of  the  Christian  society.  Charitable 
and  philanthropic  and  even  religious  societies  may  exist 
entirely  outside  the  Church,  serve  their  temporary  ends, 
and  give  place  to  others ;  or  these  societies  may  be  taken 
up  by  the  Church  into  its  own  organized  activities  and 
used  in  its  work  as  means  to  the  further  achievement  of 
its  full  Christian  idea.  The  Church  is  the  body,  of  which 
these  philanthropies  may  be  the  hands  and  the  feet.  Char- 
ities fail  of  the  best  and  most  abiding  results  without  this 
body-idea  of  the  Church ;  and  the  Church  Avithout  charities 
is  in  turn  as  a  body  without  arms.  The  idea  of  the 
Church,  consequently,  in  its  adaptation  to  the  environment 
of  men's  needs,  is  becoming  more  and  more  the  idea  of  an 
institutional  church,  or  a  church  which,  by  its  grouping 
around  it  of  practical  instrumentalities,  shall  show  itself 
to  be  a  divine  institute  for  humanity.  Such  practical 
organization  of  churches  for  a  large  and  varied  ministry 
indicates  a  hopeful  line  of  the  further  development  of  the 
true  idea  of  the  Church  in  the  immediate  future. 

3.  We  pass  next  to  the  debated  question  of  the  relation 
of  the  Church  to  the  State.  Obviously  the  State  will  hold 
a  different  relation  to  the  Church  than  that  sustained  by 
any  voluntary  association  of  men  for  social  ends  ;  for  the 
State  like  the  Church  cannot  properly  be  regarded  as  a 
voluntary  organization,  but  is  itself  a  necessary  form,  at 
least  in  this  present  world-age,  of  human  society. 


282  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

We  have  already  discussed  the  idea  of  the  State  and 
determined  its  fundamental  principle.  As  a  necessary 
form  of  certain  social  relations  which  antedate  all  con- 
tracts, and  which  are  too  constitutive  of  humanity  and  too 
vital  to  be  left  dependent  on  the  volitions  of  men,  the 
State,  we  have  seen,  possesses  the  authority  of  the  social 
nature  of  man  from  which  it  immediately  proceeds,  and 
hence  also  a  divine  sanction,  at  least  in  the  eyes  of  those 
who  believe  that  human  nature  is  constituted  in  some 
divine  idea,  and  according  to  the  eternal  law  of  God's 
reason. 

We  have  thus  recognized  two  necessary  forms  of  society; 
two  organs  of  the  collective  life  of  a  people  have  become 
differentiated  in  the  development  of  the  modern  nations. 
But  from  this  dualism  of  Church  and  State  arise  conflicts 
of  authority.  Two  powers,  each  claiming  to  be  ordained 
of  God,  have  met  in  perpetual  debate,  and  often  in  armed 
oppositions,  —  the  civil  and  the  ecclesiastical. 

No  such  conflict  was  known  to  ancient  history.  The  state,  or  the  city 
in  Greece  was  sole  sovereign.  All  religion  was  state-religion.  There  was 
no  empire  within  empire,  nor  city  of  God  within  the  city  of  man.  The 
Roman  state  was  practically  the  church  also  ;  the  Caesar  was  the  ^mntifex 
maximus.  In  the  primitive  Hebrew  religion,  likewise,  there  was  no  separa- 
tion, and  no  conflict,  between  these  two  spheres  of  rights  and  duties.  The 
lawgiver  was  the  prophet  and  priest.  Moses  represented  the  unity  of  all 
the  powers  of  law,  leadership,  and  religion,  when  he  came  down  from 
Sinai  with  the  tables  of  the  commandments  in  his  hands,  and  the  veil 
drawn  over  his  face.  Later  Judaism  witnessed  a  separation,  becoming 
tragic  at  times,  between  the  prophets  and  the  kings  ;  and  the  priesthood 
eventually  grew  to  be  a  distinct  order ;  yet  in  the  Messianic  ideal  the 
priest  and  prophet  were  conceived  as  also  the  king. 

This  conflict  between  Church  and  State  belongs  to  Chris- 
tian history  and  is  a  result  of  the  establishment  of  a  king- 
dom which  is  in  the  world  but  not  of  it.  Christianity  has 
organized  the  Church  within  the  State  and  asserts  its  spirit- 
ual independence  of  the  State.  Hobbes  put  modern  society 
under  an  ancient  and  no  longer  possible  conception,  when 
he  asserted  the  sovereignty  of  the  State  in  religion.  For 
no  Christian  nation  can  revert  wholly  to  State-CflRsarism ; 
Christianity   owns   the    two    kings,  —  the    Csesar  in   his 


SPHERES    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  283 

domain,  and  also  it  must  confess  only  the  Christ  in  his 
kingdom.  An  inward  and  spiritual  authority  of  the  divine 
sovereignty  might  indeed  be  acknowledged  without  neces- 
sary collision  with  the  outward  authority  of  the  state  ;  as 
the  state  likewise  might  exercise  no  power  over  the  souls 
of  its  subjects.  But  the  actual  case  is  not  so  simple,  for  in 
the  Church  this  inward  sovereignty  is  brought  to  visibility, 
made  concrete  and  definite  in  ecclesiastical  institutions, 
and  hence  brought  to  the  notice  of,  and  often  thrown  into 
collision  with,  the  secular  sovereignty  of  the  state. 

The  many  different  relations  w^hich  these  two  powers, 
the  civil  and  the  ecclesiastical,  have  assumed  under  differ- 
ent governments  and  in  widely  divergent  forms  of  church 
administration,  only  serve  to  show  how  extensively  and 
how  deeply  this  dualism  runs  through  the  life  of  the  modern 
Christian  nations.  But  science  is  impatient  of  dualistic 
conceptions  in  nature,  and  Christian  ethics  is  impelled  to 
raise  the  question  whether  this  separation  between  these 
two  fundamental  forms  of  modern  life,  the  Church  and 
State,  is  to  be  permanent,  or  whether,  indeed,  such  dualism 
is  consistent  with  the  Christian  ideal  of  society  w^hich  the 
Church  carries  in  its  heart. 

We  cannot  look  on  such  divided  authority  as  a  sign  that 
that  which  is  perfect  has  come.  Whether  we  can  conceive 
of  a  final  harmony  between  these  two  opposite  authorities, 
the  one  civil,  and  the  other  spiritual ;  or  whether  we  may 
be  able  to  discern  the  next  steps  towards  some  future  recon- 
ciliation between  them,  we  must  regard  this  division  of 
modern  life  between  tw^o  powers,  and  its  subjection,  although 
in  different  spheres,  to  a  double  sovereignty,  as  something 
in  its  nature  temporary,  and  destined  to  pass  away  when 
that  which  is  perfect  shall  come.  Diversities  of  organs  may 
remain  in  the  perfected  society,  but  not  confusion  of  func- 
tions or  possibility  of  conflict  of  authority. 

Unity  of  these  powers  of  modern  society  cannot  be 
wrought  by  violence.  Persecution  for  religious  opinion 
would  now  be  an  anachronism.  It  was  always  a  moral 
blunder.  The  State  cannot  take  by  violence  the  kingdom 
of  heaven ;  neither  can  the  Church  put  civil  freedom  under 


284  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

bonds.     History  has  closed  permanently  these  two  ways, 

—  the  way  of  bringing  Christ  before  the  judgment  seat  of 
Csesar  to  be  crucified,  and  the  way  of  putting  Christ  on 
Caesar's  throne  to  rule  the  kingdoms  of  the  world.  Comte 
was  right  in  regarding  the  sej^aration  of  civil  and  religious 
powers  as  one  of  the  great  gains  of  modern  history. 

How,  then,  shall  this  fundamental  social  antinomy  of 
civil  and  religious  authority  be  resolved?  (1)  We  may 
conceive  of  either  power  as  ultimately  absorbed  in  the 
other.  Such  unity  would  not  be  the  forceful  subjugation 
of  the  one  by  the  other,  but  rather  the  fulfilment  of  the 
one  in  the  perfection  of  the  other.  An  ultimate  coinci- 
dence of  Church  and  State  may  be  conceived  of  in  two 
ways  as  we  suppose  the  State  or  the  Church  to  become  the 
final  form  of  social  life.  The  State  may  be  conceived  of 
as  becoming  itself  religious,  so  that  the  Church  shall  pass 
into  the  State.  According  to  this  mode  of  conceivable 
unity  a  theocracy  Avould  be  the  Christian  goal  of  history. 
The  State  is  to  be  Christianized  and  spiritualized.  There 
will  then  be  no  further  need  of  a  separate  church  for  the 
religious  life  of  the  people.  The  perfected  Christian  State 
will  comprehend  religion  as  one  of  its  necessary  functions. 
Worship  would  then  be  the  confessed  and  legitimate  duty 
of  the  state.  The  perfected  state,  as  well  as  the  perfect 
individual,  cannot  be  conceived  as  existing  without  relig- 
ion ;  hence  worship  will  be  the  natural  posture  and  act  of 
the  true  and  complete  state.  All  that  the  Church  in  its 
separation  from  the  civil  body  has  striven  to  attain  will 
be  realized  in  the  one  true  State,  which  will  be  the  relig- 
ious society  of  humanity  in  its  single  and  complete  organi- 
zation and  administration.  Tlie  Church  will  therefore  fall 
away,  having  accomplished  its  task  and  Christianized 
society.^ 

1  This  was  Rothe's  view:  "  That  general  state-organism  must  be  conceived 
as  essentially,  at  the  same  time,  the  entirely  perfected  kingdom  of  God,  as  the 
absolute  theocracy  (reign  of  God).  But  then  also  the  religious-moral  com- 
munion, and  that  which  in  its  sphere  is  exclusively  religious  will  coincide 
absolutely  with  it,  and  the  Church  accordingly  will  fall  absolutely  away." 

—  Theol.  Ethik,  sec.  449.  Some  of  the  soberer  writers  on  socialism  leave  open 
a  similar  religious  possibility  in  their  imaginative  descriptions  of  the  social 
state.   Thus  ScliiifEle  observes  that  in  socialism  "  public  supj)ort  of  the  church  is 


SPHERES    OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    IDEAL  285 

One  might  start  from  the  other  factor,  the  Church, 
and  reach  by  the  opposite  way  a  simihir  conclusion. 
The  Church  as  the  organ  of  the  highest  human  fellowship, 
and  as  carrying  in  itself  the  idea  of  a  human  brotherhood 
in  consequence  of  the  Divine  Fatherhood,  maybe  conceived 
as  taking  up  into  its  influence  sphere  after  sphere  of  human 
life,  and  as  subordinating  all  things  to  its  control,  until  at 
last  the  State  subsides  into  the  Church,  and  the  Church  as 
the  sole  sovereignty  over  humanity  issues  from  the  long 
conflict  of  history  as  the  perfected  kingdom  of  God.  Yet 
such  has  not  been  the  course  of  modern  history  since  the 
reformation  and  the  rise  of  the  modern  nations.  The  signs 
at  present  are  not  pointing  that  w^ay. 

The  temporal  power  has  departed  from  Rome,  and  Prot- 
estantism has  not  succeeded  in  moulding  even  the  religious 
life  of  a  single  people  to  the  forms  of  one  national  Church.^ 
Moreover,  it  is  proverbial  that  ecclesiastics  make  bad 
rulers ;  the  state,  without  loss  of  the  greatest  historic  gains, 
could  not  surrender  the  liberties  of  men  to  ecclesiastical 
power,  thereby  itself  committing  suicide  in  behalf  of  the 
residuary  interest  of  religion  in  society. 

(2)  A  middle  w^ay  of  reconciliation  may  be  conceived, 
in  which  the  Church  shall  be  left  free  as  an  organ  of 
the  religious  life,  but  be  held  by  the  civil  power  in  co-or- 
dination with  all  other  organs  and  functions  of  the  social 
life.  In  this  conception  these  powers,  the  civil  and  the 
religious,  may  be  said  to  be  subordinated,  neither  of  them 
to  the  other,  but  both  to  the  organic  unity  of  the  whole 
society. 

This  is  the  conception  of  organic  unity  which  Professor  Edward  Caird 
puts  forward  in  opposition  to  Comte's  separation  of  his  priesthood  of 
humanity  as  an  independent  power  :  "And  organic  unity,  though  it  does 
not  mean  any  special  form  of  government,  means  at  least  two  things :  in 
the  first  place,  that  each  great  class  or  interest  should  have  for  itself  a 


possible,  although  not  very  probable." — Quintessenz  des  SociaUsmKS,  s.  G3. 
He  supposes  as  another  alternate  possibility  for  religion  in  the  reign  of  col- 
lectivism, that  voluntary  societies  for  spiritual  objects  may  be  instituted;  but 
he  fails  to  show  how  these  are  to  be  adjusted  and  supported  in  harmony 
with  other  socialistic  conditions. 

1  Maurice's  hi'4h  conception  of  the  national  Church  is  not  prophetic  because 
it  is  not  historic. 


286  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

definite  organ  and  should  therefore  be  able  to  act  on  the  whole  body  in  a 
regular  and  constitutional  manner,  so  as  to  show  all  its  force  without 
revolutionary  violence ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  that  no  class  or  interest 
should  have  such  an  independent  position,  as  to  exclude  every  legal  or 
constitutional  method  of  bringing  it  into  due  subordination  to  the  common 
good"  {The  Social  Philosophy  of  Comte,  ]).  246).  But  what  in  this 
conception  is  the  organizing  principle,  what  the  one  organic  form? 
Keally  the  ultimate  principle  is  the  idea  of  social  good  to  be  secured 
through  the  civil  power,  so  that  ultimately  in  this  form  of  unity  the 
Church  is  subordinated,  although  as  a  complete  organ,  to  the  State, 
which  is  the  one  organic  form  of  social  life. 

This  mediation  between  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical 
authority  may  be  practically  attempted  in  two  ways  — 
through  a  national  Church  maintained  by  the  State  as  the 
organ  for  the  religious  life  of  the  people  with  guaranteed 
independence  in  its  own  sphere ;  or  by  a  free  church  in  a 
free  state.  The  former  method  of  mediation  is  the  histori- 
cal compromise  between  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  powers 
which  in  some  form  of  it  has  been  gained  by  most  modern 
nations  ;  it  cannot  be  claimed,  however,  that  by  it  a  condi- 
tion of  stable  equilibrium  has  been  reached.  Our  present 
purpose  requires  us,  however,  only  to  note  the  fact  (with- 
out discussing  any  of  the  questions  involved  in  it)  that 
established  churches  do  not  escape  all  conflicts  of  jurisdic- 
tion, and  the  shadow  of  possible  disestablishment  lies 
across  their  future. 

Neither  can  it  be  claimed  that  a  condition  of  stable 
equilibrium  has  been  reached  where  a  free  church  exists  in 
a  free  state.  We  have  in  this  relation  of  these  two  pow- 
ers, as  in  other  historical  compromises  between  them,  only 
a  modus  Vivendi^  not  a  permanent  or  ideal  harmony.  There 
is  a  border-land  still  left  between  the  domain  of  the  free 
state  and  the  province  of  the  free  church,  where  incursions 
from  the  one  side  or  the  other  may  provoke  new  conflicts 
of  authority.  Indications  of  this  dualism,  which  still  exists 
in  the  freest  modern  societies,  may  be  found  in  the  ques- 
tions wliich  repeatedly  arise  concerning  marriage  laws,  the 
Bible  in  public  schools,  the  observance  of  religious  forms 
on  state  occasions,  and  provisions  for  the  religious  benefit 
of  bodies  under  state  control  such  as  the  army  and  navy, 
or  the  penal  and  reformatory  institutions  of  the  land,  and 


SPHERES    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  287 

even  with  regard  to  the  proposition  of  taxing  church  prop- 
erty, like  other  property,  for  the  benefit  of  the  state. 

Such  taxation  is  resisted  on  the  part  of  a  free  church  not  merely  on 
the  ground  that  it  is  a  benevolent  institution  which  may  be  exempted 
from  certam  public  burdens  because  it  renders  a  public  service,  but  also, 
and  more  fundamentally,  because  even  a  free  church  in  a  free  state  will 
be  slow  to  acknowledge  dependence  on  the  state  in  any  manner  which 
might  threaten  its  existence,  or  which  might  imperil  its  rightful  sovereignty 
on  its  own  ground.  The  power  that  levies  a  tax  by  that  act  affirms  a 
certain  sovereignty  over  the  subject  which  it  taxes.  But  the  Church  is 
not  wholly  subject  to  the  sovereignty  of  the  state.  It  is  a  spiritual  inde- 
pendence, and  it  will  be  reluctant  to  acknowledge  any  claim  which  might 
end  in  its  entire  subordination  to  the  civil  power.  The  admission  of  the 
sovereignty  of  the  state  over  all  ecclesiastical  property  to  the  extent  of 
enforcing  a  tax  upon  it,  might  prove  a  dangerous  concession  to  the  state  ; 
it  might  bring  the  Church  into  such  an  outward  subjection  to  the  state  as 
would  prove  to  be  a  serious  impairment  of  its  rightful  position.  The 
Church  might  pay  its  share  for  civil  protection,  but  it  must  maintain  as 
much  outward  freedom  from  the  state  as  may  be  necessary  to  guarantee 
its  spiritual  existence  and  authority.  There  must  be  somewhere  in  the 
spiritual  independence  of  the  Church  a  limit  to  the  power  of  the  state 
over  its  property  and  external  administration.  Its  communion  service 
should  not  be  submitted  to  the  hand  of  the  tax-gatherer.  While  obviously, 
on  the  one  hand,  all  power  of  the  state  to  limit  or  bring  under  the 
control  of  the  laws  of  the  land  the  property  of  the  Church  cannot  be 
denied,  for  it  is  property,  and  as  such,  falls  under  the  oversight  of  the 
state ;  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  evident  justice  in  the  claim  that 
the  exercise  of  civil  jurisdiction  over  the  property  of  the  Church  cannot 
be  pushed  too  far,  and  must  be  held  under  some  restrictions,  because 
while  it  is  property  subject  to  the  law,  it  is  also  the  propertj^  of  a  body 
which  claims  a  certain  independent  sovereignty  for  itself  above  the  civil 
authority.  And  wiienever  it  is  felt  that  the  exercise  of  the  ordinary 
powers  of  the  state  might  bring  into  question  this  free  sovereignty  of  the 
Church  in  its  own  sphere,  the  exercise  of  that  authority  will  be  resisted 
by  those  who  believe  in  the  spiritual  independence  of  the  Church  from 
the  state.     The  autonomy  of  the  Church  is  to  be  preserved. 

This  question  as  to  the  right  of  the  state  to  tax  church 
property,  or,  if  we  admit  the  right  in  general,  the  question 
concerning  the  limits  of  the  exercise  of  it  which  are 
required  by  the  necessary  autonomy  of  the  Church,  indicates 
that  the  present  relation  between  these  bodies,  even  when 
each  has  been  made  most  independent  of  the  other,  is  not 
a  permanent  adjustment  of  things,  and  that  a  free  church 
in  a  free  state  cannot  be  regarded  as  an  ideal  and  hence 
ultimate  solution  of  this  conflict  of  civil  and  religious 
forces  in  modern  history. 


288  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

An  evolution  of  church  and  state  through  these  three  chief  forms  may- 
be traced  in  the  history  of  the  New  Haven  Colony,  the  process  taking 
place  within  the  short  period  of  less  than  two  centuries.  The  settlers  of 
the  colony  established  practically  in  the  wilderness  a  church-state.  The 
Mosaic  law  was  made  temporarily  the  civil  law,  and  holding  civil  office 
was  conditioned  on  church-membership.  Subsequently,  the  New  Haven 
Colony  came  under  the  charter  of  Connecticut,  and  the  General  Court 
assumed  in  many  ways  oversight  of  ecclesiastical  affairs.  The  Church 
was  maintained  by  taxation.  The  legislative  body  was  more  than  once 
called  to  advise  in  ecclesiastical  controversies ;  the  legislature,  for 
instance,  prescribed  how  a  second  ecclesiastical  body  should  be  set  off 
from  the  original  society  of  the  First  Church  in  New  Haven,  and  deter- 
mined not  only  the  allotment  of  property,  but  also,  after  allowing  a  certain 
time  for  personal  choice,  the  division  of  the  population  between  the  two 
congregations.  Such  legislative  interference  and  control  tended  towards, 
if  in  some  respects  it  did  not  practically  amount  to,  a  state-church.  The 
act  of  toleration,  however,  looked  in  another  direction,  and  later,  the 
existing  separation  of  ecclesiastical  and  legislative  functions  was  effected ; 
under  the  present  constitution  of  the  state  there  is  no  interference  of  the 
civil  with  the  religious  body  in  anything  pertaining  projDerly  to  the  sphere 
of  the  latter. 

We  may  look  upon  some  confessedly  imperfect,  work- 
ing-theory of  the  relation  of  Church  and  State  as  the 
best  possible  provision  under  existing  social  conditions. 
Adopting  in  this  matter  Herbert  Spencer's  frequent  dis- 
tinction between  "absolute  ethics"  and  "relative  ethics," 
we  may  be  content  to  support  that  co-ordination  of  the 
civil  and  ecclesiastical  powers  in  any  country  which  seems 
to  be  most  in  accordance  with  the  spirit  of  its  institutions 
and  in  the  line  of  its  truest  historical  development.  We 
shall  thereby  reach  that  which  is  relatively  good  under 
present  conditions,  although  we  fail  of  that  which  is 
ideally  best. 

The  question,  however,  still  remains,  what  is  the  ideal 
relation  of  Church  and  State  ? 

(3)  A  transcendental  unity  of  these  powers  is  con- 
ceivable. 

The  limit  of  the  possible  in  the  development  of  the  life 
of  humanity  is  only  set  by  something  inconceivable.  We 
cannot  say  that  a  conceivable  goal  is  impossible.  A  tran- 
scendental and  final  oneness  of  the  spheres  and  functions  of 
social  life  which  now  are  so  distinct  and  independent  as 
the  civil  and  religious,  is  not  inconceivable,  and  therefore 


SPHERES    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  289 

not  beyond  the  range  of  the  human  possibilities ;  for  all 
that  is  necessary  in  order  to  suppose  it  accomplished  is  to 
imagine  the  complete  spiritualization  and  Christianization 
of  both  powers,  —  that  is,  of  the  life  of  humanity  in  its 
entirety.  The  ultimate  unity  would  be  reached  when  all 
law  should  have  become  an  inw^ard  law,  and  the  inward 
religious  spirit  should  also  have  given  form  and  color  to 
all  outward  spheres  of  existence,  so  that  both  civil  govern- 
ment and  ecclesiastical  authority,  as  external  forms  of  the 
one  perfect  life,  would  alike  become  unnecessary,  and  might 
pass  away.  This  final  unity  would  be  the  result  of  that 
inward  unifying  and  perfecting  of  society  which  would 
render  all  outward  law  and  order  superfluous. 

We  can  already  see  some  beginning  of  this  process 
towards  higher  unity  in  the  lives  of  individuals.  Grace  be- 
comes the  law  of  conduct,  and  needs  no  longer  the  outward 
commandments  of  religion.  In  the  spiritual  lawfulness  of 
their  natures  Christian  men  begin  to  live  in  the  same  free- 
dom both  in  Church  and  State.  Outward  forms  and  order 
are  the  means  freely  chosen  and  spontaneously  obeyed  by 
them  for  the  expression  of  human  fellowship  and  worship; 
yet  in  proportion  as  the  inward  work  of  the  Spirit  is  com- 
plete they  cease  to  need  the  external  authorities  either 
of  civil  or  religious  obligation.  Conceive  this  inward 
liberty  and  law  of  the  Spirit  to  become  not  only  the  virtue 
of  a  few,  but  the  wisdom  also  of  the  many ;  conceive 
society  as  one  whole  to  be  thus  thoroughly  spiritualized ; 
and  then  both  the  outward  order  of  the  State  and  the  forms 
of  the  Church  might  also  be  conceived  to  coalesce  and  in- 
deed to  fall  awa}',  as  the  husks  fall  from  the  ripened  grain 
at  the  harvest  time.  The  one  perfected  life  Avould  find 
natural  and  spontaneous  expression  both  in  the  active 
fellowships  of  pure  spirits  with  one  another,  aud  in  the 
communion  and  worship  of  all  the  saints  in  the  presence 
of  the  one  true  God. 

As  the  conclusion  of  this  discussion  of  the  relations  of 
Church  and  State  the  following  should  accordingly  be 
written  down :  (1)  The  Church  and  the  State  are  the 
present  necessary  forms  for  the  realization  of  the  Christian 


290  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

Ideal,  and  each  represents  a  part  of  the  complete  good 
which  is  to  be  realized.  They  are  not  therefore  to  be 
regarded  as  mere  means  to  something  beyond  themselves, 
but  rather  as  representing,  each  in  its  sphere,  something 
which  belongs  to  the  essential  idea  of  the  perfect  human 
good,  and  which  therefore  is  an  end  in  itself.  (2)  But 
that  perfect  human  good  is  to  be  realized  in  some  final  and 
complete  unity  and  harmony  of  all  its  elements ;  these 
two  powers  are  now,  however,  not  perfectly  harmonized 
under  any  historic  forms.  (3)  Hence,  while  representing 
essential  elements  in  the  idea  of  the  highest  human  perfec- 
tion, they  are  signs  also  of  a  still  unfinished  development, 
and  an  incompleted  working  out  of  the  Christian  Ideal. 
(4)  Through  these  two  related  and  as  yet  not  perfectly 
harmonized  forms  of  social  organization  the  Ideal  moves 
on  towards  some  further  and  transcendental  unity;  mean- 
while the  best  practical  working  harmony  between  the 
two  is  to  be  observed.  (5)  That  final  unity  may  be  con- 
ceived as  possible  through  the  spiritualization  of  all  the 
spheres  of  life  until  these  temporal  outward  forms  for  the 
working  of  the  Spirit  shall  no  longer  be  needed,  and  may 
pass  in  fulfilment  away.  Through  the  Church  and  the 
State  as  two  mutually  complementary  forms,  preserving 
each  other,  and,  in  the  spirit  of  the  laws  and  in  the  com- 
prehension of  the  body  of  Christ,  becoming  more  assimi- 
lated to  each  other,  the  progressive  realization  of  the 
Christian  Ideal  is  to  be  brought  to  pass,  until  the  present 
world-age  shall  come  to  the  end  of  its  time  and  the  comple- 
tion of  its  historic  task,  and  the  new  heavens  and  the  new 
earth,  wherein  dwelleth  righteousness,  shall  appear. 

The  Christian  prophet  saw  no  temple  in  heaven; — the 
Church  with  its  localized  centre  of  worship  will  not  be 
needed  there.  "And  the  nations  shall  walk  amidst  the 
light  thereof ;  and  the  kings  of  the  earth  do  bring  their 
glory  into  it  "  ;  —  all  human  government  has  fulfilled  its 
course,  and  brought  its  good  through  the  gates  into  the 
heavenly  city.  There  remains  but  one  throne,  and  there  is 
one  Presence,  before  whom  all  worship  —  one  Light  in 
which   all    dwell,  — "  even   the    throne    of    God   and   the 


SPHERES    OF   THE    CHRISTIAN   IDEAL  291 

Lamb  "  ;  and  "  the  glory  of  God  did  lighten  it."  ^  Thns 
both  these  earthly  forms  of  the  kingdom,  the  Church  and 
the  State,  shall  be  needed  no  more  and  shall  pass  away, 
when  the  Messianic  reign  shall  come,  and  Christ's  king- 
dom be  delivered  up  to  the  Father  that  God  may  be  all 
in  all. 

§  4c.     THE     INDETERMINATE     SOCIAL     SPHERES     FOR     THE      REALIZA- 
TION   OF    THE    CHRISTIAN    IDEAL 

Men  may  form  for  themselves  social  spheres  more  or  less 
definite  and  stable  along  lines  of  individual  choice  and 
association,  or  of  similar  industrial  pursuits,  or  of  still 
larger  public  interests.  Our  friendships  gather  a  social 
community  around  our  homes  ;  business  becomes  the  or- 
ganizing power  of  still  other  social  groups ;  every  princi- 
ple of  association  for  common  interests  segregates  men 
into  communities,  and  the  lines  of  such  classification  may 
cross  even  the  well-marked  boundaries  of  religious  separa- 
tion or  of  national  division.  It  is  a  sign  of  the  progress 
of  the  spiritual  life  of  man  that  the  circles  of  these  com- 
mon human  interests  have  been  so  multiplied  and  enlarged. 
The  sphere  of  the  individual's  interest  in  Aristotle's  day 
was  practicall}^  confined  to  the  city  in  which  he  dwelt ; 
the  city  was  his  community,  and  it  comprised  within  its 
single  organic  cell  all  the  social  interests  of  men.  But 
now  tlie  community  which  surrounds  the  family-unit  is 
not  limited  to  a  single  village,  or  tribe,  or  comprised  even 
within  the  bounds  of  any  nationality ;  the  lines  of  one's 
social  interest  are  not  stopped  at  the  walls  of  cities,  and 
may  reach  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  Friendship  in  the 
modern  world  may  become  a  magnetic  bond  between  oppo- 
site hemispheres ;  and  the  highways  of  commerce,  as  well 
as  the  enterprise  of  missionary  love,  are  making  men  fel- 
low-citizens of  one  world. 

The  communit}^,  which  each  man  forms  around  himself, 
may  be  defined  as  that  part  of  the  social  tissue  which, 
w^hether  near  or  remote,  is  bound  up,  and  exists  in 
some    sympathetic  touch,  with  the  nerve-centre  of   force 

1  Rev.  xsii.  3  ;  xxi.  23. 


292  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

that  is  represented  by  his  individual  will.^  The  communit}^ 
in  this  sense  may  be  large  for  one  man,  and  small  for 
another;  limited  by  the  narrowness  of  one  man's  interest 
in  life,  and  grandly  expanded  by  another's  love  of  human- 
ity. The  community  is  the  social  surrounding  which  is 
left  open  to  private  choice  and  free  ^association.  It  is  the 
larger  sphere  of  the  individual's  personal  life.  Its  diame- 
ter may  be  measured  by  the  reach  of  his  will,  and  its  cir- 
cumference by  his  interest  in  humanity. 

1  Writers  in  socioloijy  have  of  late  been  inclined  to  classify  as  distinct 
social  spheres  those  forms  of  association  or  co-operation  which  have  acquired 
a  certain  fixity  and  distinctiveness  of  industrial  character,  such  as  the  work- 
shop, or  any  definite  and  permanent  combination  of  men  in  similar  pursuits. 
(Thus  Htiffding  uses  the  phrase, "  Die  freie  Kulturj?esellschaft"  ;  FAliik,  s.  251.) 
We  need  not  go  further  at  this  i^oint  into  this  subdivision,  as  we  shall  recur  to 
these  forms  of  social  life  subsequently;  it  is  necessary,  however,  in  classify- 
ing the  spheres  of  life  to  leave  room  for  these  lesser  and  variable  forms. 


PAET  SECOND.    CHEISTIAN  DUTIES 

CHAPTER   I 

THE   CHRISTIAN   CONSCIENCE 

We  are  not  speaking  of  a  moral  theory,  but  of  a  familiar 
moral  fact,  when  we  speak  of  the  Christian  conscience. 
It  is  a  typical  form  of  man's  moral  consciousness.  It  is 
not  an  indeterminate  and  nebulous  moral  consciousness ; 
the  Christian  conscience  is  as  positive  and  distinct  a  fact 
in  man's  moral  history  as  is  the  morning  star  in  the  sky. 
It  is  to  be  observed  and  studied,  therefore,  as  a  known  and 
luminous  moral  power,  although  of  a  spiritual  order. 

I.     THE   SPECIFIC   CHARACTER   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN 
CONSCIENCE 

1.  The  Christian  conscience  receives  certain  definite 
characteristics  through  its  formative  principle  of  faith. 
By  faith  in  Christ  the  moral  consciousness  is  brought 
under  the  power  of  a  personal  Example ;  the  conscience 
becomes  Christian  as  it  is  mastered  by  Christ.^  The 
Christian  conscience  is  conscience  no  more  bound  under 
an  impersonal  law,  but  greeting  the  promise  of  its  living 
Ideal.  It  is  conscience  following  its  Christ  into  the  felt 
presence  of  God. 

The  influence  of  faith  by  which  conscience  becomes 
Christian,  will  produce  two  marked  effects  in  the  moral 
consciousness :  it  will  greatly  intensify  the  sense  of  per- 
sonal responsibility,  and  it  will  also  light  up  conscientious- 
ness with  a  sense  of  freedom.  The  touch  of  the  Spirit  of 
Christ  awakens  conscience  to  a  sense  of  the  whole  obliga- 

1  2  Cor.  X.  5. 


294  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

tion  of  a  human  life  before  unrealized.  The  effect  of  con- 
version on  the  natural  conscience  is  to  raise  it  to  a  higher 
power. 

This  result  holds  true  if  we  compare  the  same  individual  conscience 
with  itself  before  and  after  a  clear  Christian  decision  of  life  has  been 
made.  It  may  not  seem  to  be  true  if  we  compare  men  of  naturally  fine 
moral  discernment  who  are  not  professedly  Christians,  with  men  of  natu- 
rally low  moral  development  who  have  become  Christians.  It  is  also 
true  that  the  moral  growth  of  Christian  men  may  be  retarded  and  kept 
down  when  overlaid  with  crusts  of  creedal  or  ecclesiastical  forms.  The 
development  of  the  Christian  life  on  the  ethical  side  may  be  checked  by 
an  undue  intellectual,  or  even  emotional  development  of  the  religious 
nature  ;  or  the  moral  growth  may  not  have  kept  up  with  the  religious, 
and  consequently  we  may  observe  occasionally  side  by  side  in  the  same 
man,  or  in  the  same  Christian  community  for  a. time,  a  comparatively  low 
standard  of  Christian  honor  together  with  a  high  idea  of  the  claims  of 
religious  truth  and  the  exercise  of  pious  affections.  But  these  arrested 
or  one-sided  developments  of  Christianity  always  tend  to  correct  them- 
selves in  due  season.  The  distinctive  fact  to  be  observed  is  the  effect 
of  religion  on  the  same  conscience  as  compared  with  what  was,  or  might 
be,  the  moral  condition  without  such  religious  motive.  Individual  cases 
often  present  a  simple  moral  problem  in  the  rule  of  three :  if  a  man  with 
his  religious  training  and  beliefs  possesses  only  so  much  moral  character, 
how  much  less  would  he  have  without  any  power  of  Christianity  in  his 
conscience  ?  In  so  far  as  the  conscience  feels  and  responds  to  the  influ- 
ence of  Christ,  it  is  clarified  in  its  moral  judgments  and  rendered  more 
efficient  in  its  moral  action. 

The  other  characteristic  mentioned,  which  faith  imparts 
to  the  Christian  conscience,  is  freedom.  It  is  distinctive 
of  the  Christian  life,  that  while  it  grows  more  conscien- 
tious, it  also  grows  less  and  less  a  task  of  duty  and  more 
and  more  a  service  of  delight.  The  Christian  faith  renders 
life  throughout  a  fulfilment  of  a  trust.  By  faith  the 
law  of  love  is  transformed  into  the  love  of  law.  And 
almost  in  proportion  as  the  law  is  loved,  it  ceases  to  be 
felt  as  law.  Hence  Christian  conscientiousness  ceases  to 
be  a  hard,  punctilious  moral  accounting,  and  becomes  an 
eager  and  glad  fulfilment  of  the  commandments.  The 
love  of  God  masters  the  Christian  man,  and  the  mastery 
of  Love  is  found  to  be  perfect  liberty.  The  man  who 
looks  into  the  perfect  law  of  liberty  is  blessed  in  his 
doing.i     Fear  is  cast  out  b}^  perfect  love.^ 

1  James  i.  25.  2  i  John  iv.  18. 


THE   CHUISTIAX   CONSCIEXCE  295 

2.  The  Christian  conscience  receives  distinctive  char- 
acter from  its  informing  principle  of  love.  Its  enhanced 
power  and  gracious  freedom,  which  are  the  effects  of  faith 
in  the  moral  consciousness,  are  further  heightened  and 
irradiated  bj  the  love  which  is  the  indwelling  and  abiding 
motive  of  the  Christian  obligation  of  life.  But  besides 
these  effects,  other  happy  results  appear  Avhen  the  love  of 
Christ  is  made  the  constraining  law  of  the  Christian  con- 
science.^ Love  in  the  conscience  becomes  light  in  which 
duty  is  to  be  more  clearly  discovered.  "  And  this  I  pray," 
said  an  apostle,  "  that  your  love  may  abound  yet  more  and 
more  in  knowledge  and  all  discernment."  ^  Love  is  itself 
a  power  of  knowing,  and  science  without  love  fails  of 
insight  into  the  heart  of  nature.  Love  is  likewise  a  prin- 
ciple of  moral  discernment ;  love  abounds  in  good  judg- 
ment. There  is  no  clearer  light  for  the  determination  of 
what  is  duty  than  this ;  let  your  love  abound  in  your 
practical  judgments.  The  largest,  surest  common  sense 
is  that  in  which  love  abounds.  Selfishness  never  shows 
the  best  judgment.  On  the  whole,  and  in  the  larger 
issues  of  things,  love  always  proves  to  have  been  the 
happier  discernment.  We  may  be  distrustful  of  any  posi- 
tion which  we  hold,  and  any  course  we  are  pursuing,  if 
we  find  that  our  love  does  not  grow  in  it.  The  unfailing 
light  of  the  divine  wisdom  is  love.  Infinite  love  can  make 
no  mistakes.  And  the  surest  ways  are  the  ways  wherein 
there  is  the  most  love:  the  clearest  parts  of  our  conduct, 
amid  these  perplexities  of  things,  are  the  Christlike  parts 
of  our  lives. 

As  the  light  of  love  in  the  Christian  conscience  renders 
it  a  peculiarly  bright  and  discerning  conscience,  so  like- 
wise it  keeps  it  in  the  truth,  and  renders  it  especially  a 
truth-seeking  conscience.  This  truthfulness  of  it  follows 
directly  from  its  informing  principle ;  for  love  must  seek 
to  go  to  the  heart  of  nature,  and  can  rest  satisfied  only  in 
the  embrace  of  eternal  reality.  In  proportion  to  its  purity 
and  its  power  love  will  free  its  eyes  from  all  deceptions, 
and  consume  as  a  holy  flame  the  spuriousness  and  j)i'ide  of 

1  2  Cor.  V.  14.  2  Phil.  i.  9. 


296  CHRISTIAX   ETHICS 

life.  Perfect  love  can  abide  only  in  perfect  truth.  Con- 
sequentl}^  the  conscience  which  is  informed  and  inspired 
with  Christian  love,  will  be  a  constant  ardor  of  soul  for 
the  truth.  Nothing  untrue  can  be  lovable  to  the  eye  of 
the  Christian  conscience.  In  this  devotion  to  the  truth 
faith  works  with  love  in  the  Christian  moral  conscious- 
ness; for  faith  is  the  receptive  attitude  of  a  man's  whole 
rational  and  moral  nature  towards  the  truth.  Faith  is 
intellectual  openness  towards  the  truth,  and  moral  deter- 
mination to  trust  in  the  truth,  —  come  from  what  source  or 
with  what  message  it  will.  Faith  is  the  simple,  yet  pro- 
foundest  effort  and  aim  of  our  human  nature  in  its  integ- 
rity to  keep  in  vital  touch  with,  and  to  wait  for  knowledge 
of,  the  final  and  absolute  truth  of  the  universe.  Hence 
the  Christian  conscience,  by  virtue  of  its  formative  prin- 
ciple of  faith,  as  well  as  by  virtue  of  its  indwelling  law 
of  love,  will  be  a  conscience  in  the  truth  and  of  the  truth, 
an  intensely  truthful  conscience. 

3.  Still  another  characteristic  of  a  genuinely  Christian 
conscience,  which  proceeds  from  those  just  mentioned, 
remains  to  be  noticed :  it  is  a  conscience  which  lives  and 
works  in  hope.  It  moves  off  along  all  the  ways  of  human 
effort  in  the  expectation  of  the  Christ.  The  Christian 
conscience  might  be  described  as  distinctively  a  Messianic 
conscience.  It  condemns  the  evil  and  follows  after  the 
good  in  the  full  assurance  that  good  is  to  overcome  the 
evil.  It  becomes  consequently  a  happy  and  healthful  con- 
science in  all  its  contacts  with  sin  and  suffering.  Hope- 
fulness is  the  moral  wholesomeness  of  the  Christian  con- 
science in  the  world.  There  is  always  something  unhealth- 
ful  in  a  conscience  which  has  lost  hope.  The  Christian 
conscience  by  reason  of  its  faith  and  love  can  never  grow 
cynical,  or  pessimistic,  or  be  unsympathetic  in  its  judg- 
ments of  human  life.  It  is  a  helpful,  because  always  a 
hopeful,  moral  presence  among  men. 

We  have  already  pointed  out^  the  tendency  of  morality 
without  religious  faith  to  become  pessimistic ;  although 
bioloo^ical  ethics  recoo^nizes  the  fact  that,  so  far  as  we  can 


THE   CHRISTIAN   CONSCIENCE  297 

see,  the  great  laws  of  life  work  towards  beneficent  results. 
Yet  hope  requires  for  its  full  assurance  some  faith  in  a 
larger  cosmical  order  than  is  seen,  and  its  spiritual  com- 
pletions of  life.  Having  this  hope,  the  Christian  con- 
science is  characterized  by  ultimate  optimism  in  its  judg- 
ments. The  New  Testament,  which  is  the  outward  rule 
of  the  Christian  conscience,  is  from  beginning  to  end,  in 
its  prophetic  outlook,  the  most  hopeful  book  in  all  the 
literature  of  the  world.  Its  gospel  begins  with  a  heavenly 
song  of  peace  and  good  will,  and  it  ends  with  the  new 
song  of  the  redeemed.  Beyond  all  passing  clouds  of  evil 
Christian  faith  sees  the  eternal  sunshine. 

This  hopefulness  of  the  conscience  that  is  made  con- 
formable to  Christ,  will  affect  the  very  quality  and  spirit 
of  it;  the  daily  conversation  and  habitual  judgments  of 
human  affairs  and  of  the  vast,  unfinished  problems  of 
providence  will  be  lighted  up  and  clarified  by  the  Christian 
hope.  The  conscientiousness  of  the  Christian  believer 
will  not  be  overcast  and  full  of  gloom ;  hopefulness  will 
be  the  prevailing  sunniness  of  the  Christian  consciousness 
of  life  and  death. 


;      II.     THE  CHRISTIAN  EDUCATION  OF   CONSCIENCE 

1.  The  life  of  conscience  is  from  the  Father  of  spirits  ; 
but  the  development  of  the  Christian  conscience  is,  in  the 
first  instance,  the  result  of  the  Christian  training  of  the 
household,  and  subsequently  of  the  whole  moral  disci- 
pline of  life.  The  education  of  conscience  is  the  office 
of  Christian  pedagogics,  which  begins  with  the  baptism  of 
the  child  and  its  first  awakening  into  the  atmosphere  of  a 
Christian  home,  and  which  includes  the  prayers  learned 
from  the  Christian  parents'  lips,  the  nurture  of  Christian 
love,  the  methodical  training  in  knowledge  of  the  Scrip- 
tures which  is,  or  should  be,  given  to  all  its  children  by 
the  Church,  as  well  as  the  whole  subsequent  education  of 
maturer  years  in  Christian  truth,  and  exercise  in  the  appli- 
cation of  Christian  principles  to  the  problems  of  life. 
Indeed  all  our  earthly  life  from  the  cradle  to  the   grave 


298  CHKISTIAN   ETHICS 

may  be  regarded  as  one  progressive  school  for  the  educa- 
tion of  the  Christian  conscience.  Not  only  was  the  law 
a  schoolmaster  to  lead  to  Christ,  but  the  gospel  itself,  in 
its  ethical  power,  is  a  schoolmaster  to  lead  to  the  final 
fitness  of  souls  for  fellowship  with  the  ascended  Christ  in 
his  ultimate  kingdom  of  love. 

While  the  Christian  conscience  is  no  more  a  servant, 
but  a  son,  and,  as  Ignatius  observed  long  ago,  "  it  is  absurd 
to  profess  Christ  Jesus,  and  to  Judaize,"  ^  still  there  is  a 
sense  in  which  we  still  must  find  Christianity  to  be  a 
school  of  life ;  the  Puritans  discovered  frequent  reasons 
in  the  weaknesses  of  human  nature  for  holding  up  "gospel 
rules  and  patterns."  Ascetic  restraints  or  self-disciplinary 
vows  may  have  a  certain  relative  necessity,  as  an  athletic 
training,  in  the  strengthening  of  Christian  manhood ;  they 
become  vicious,  however,  when  valued  as  ends  in  them- 
selves, and  are  to  be  condemned  whenever  they  do  not 
help  men  learn  the  great  Christian  lesson  of  living  with 
a  good  conscience  in  the  freedom  of  the  gospel.  For  as 
Ignatius  said  of  Judaism,  — "  Christianity  did  not  be- 
lieve into  Judaism,  but  Judaism  into  Christianity,"  ^  —  so 
we  should  say  that  Christianity  does  not  fall  into  ascet- 
icism, but  whatever  discix3linary  processes  conscience  may 
still  find  necessary,  are  to  lead  into  Christianity,  which 
is  the  law  of  liberty.  Some  outward  schooling  of  con- 
science through  rules,  resolutions,  vows  of  abstinence, 
may  be  necessary  so  long  as  sin  remains  in  the  world,  and 
temptations  suddenly  may  assail ;  but  such  necessity  of 
discipline  is  a  sign  of  our  present  immaturity,  and  should 
be  humbly  accepted  as  a  preparatory  training  of  character, 
and  never  vaunted  as  meritorious  ;  ideally,  and  in  its 
finished  education,  the  Christian  conscience  dispenses  with 
all  rules  as  its  Lord's  perfect  art  of  living-  is  mastered,  and 
love  lacks  no  discernment  and  will  never  fail. 

2.  The  relation  between  the  individual  and  the  social 
training  and  development  of  the  Christian  conscience 
needs  to  be  more  closely  considered. 

'^Ad  Magn.  x.  ^  Ibid.  x. 


THE   CHEISTIAN   CONSCIENCE  299 

Recent  etliical  writers  have  justly  urged  that,  strictly 
speaking,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  an  individual  con- 
science ;  that  all  conscience  is  necessarily  social ;  that  no 
conscience  can  be  formed  except  in  a  social  matrix ;  and 
that  every  conscience  carries  the  marks  of  the  mould  in 
which  it  has  been  formed,  and  shows  in  its  constitution  the 
typical  signs  of  its  human  birth  and  inheritance.  This  is 
only  the  ethical  part,  however,  of  the  general  truth  of  the 
solidarity  of  humanity.  Every  man  is  an  individual  of  a 
race,  and  the  destiny  of  each  man,  in  whatsoever  age  he  is 
born,  is  bound  up  in  the  entire  history  of  mankind,  and 
waits  for  its  determination  in  the  consummation  of  the 
whole.  Of  each  human  life  it  may  be  said,  as  it  was  said 
of  an  inspired  word  of  God,  "  No  prophecy  of  scripture  is 
of  private  interpretation."  Every  life  is  a  prophecy  which 
belongs  to  the  whole  course  of  redemption,  and  its  special 
scripture  must  be  interpreted  and  judged  in  its  relation  to 
all  that  has  gone  before  and  to  all  that  is  to  follow  after  it. 
Hence  the  Christian  individual  in  his  moral  judgments 
and  growth  can  never  be  absolutely  independent  of  the 
Christian  social  whole  —  the  Church  of  the  living  God. 
The  individual  Christian  conscience  is  formed  in  the  com- 
munion of  the  saints.  Ethically,  as  well  as  spiritually, 
will  the  saying  of  the  apostle  justify  itself,  that  we  may  be 
"strong  to  apprehend  with  all  the  saints  what  is  the 
breadth  and  length  and  height  and  depth,  and  to  know 
the  love  of  Christ  which  passeth  knowledge."  ^  While  the 
Christian  conscience  is  absolutely  dependent  on  Christ,  and 
He  only  is  its  supreme  law,  it  is  relatively  dependent  on 
the  Church,  and  will  be  influenced  by,  as  well  as  act 
directly  upon,  the  moral  consciousness  which  prevails  in 
the  general  Christianity  of  an  age. 

3.  The  conscience  of  the  Church,  therefore,  which  is 
the  resultant  of  the  general  moral  education  of  the  Chris- 
tian world  and  which  shapes  and  moulds  the  individual 
conscience  in  any  age,  is  a  factor  in  man's  moral  history 
second  to  no  other  power  and  of  far-reaching  consequences. 
This  general   conscience   of   the   Church  holds  a  certain 

1  Eph.  iii.  18,  19. 


300  CHKISTIAN   ETHICS 

externality,  and  presents  even  a  nomistic  form,  to  the  indi- 
vidual Christian  conscience.  It  is  to  be  considered  as  the 
continuation  of  the  outward  law  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  or 
as  the  embodiment  in  successive  forms  of  the  moral  life  of 
the  Spirit ;  as  the  Church  is  itself  in  some  real  sense  the 
body  of  Christ  and  the  continuation  of  his  life  in  the 
world. 

This  is  the  truth  which  underlies  the  Roman  Catholic 
doctrine  of  the  confessional.  It  is  properly  held  that  the 
individual  conscience  should  rectify  itself  by  the  conscience 
of  the  Church.  In  its  collective  conscience  it  receives  the 
confession  of  the  individual  conscience,  corrects  it,  justifies 
it,  or  shows  it  the  right  rules  to  which  it  should  conform. 
And  in  this  underlying  idea  of  the  general  collective  con- 
science of  the  Catholic  Church  as  a  corrective  and  law  for 
the  individual,  there  is  a  deep  Christian  truth,  —  the  truth 
that  no  man  lives  to  himself,  that  no  man  even  in  his  best 
life  can  be  wholly  independent  of  his  fellows  ;  that  there  is 
a  human  conscience  answering  to  the  Divine  righteousness, 
a  human  conscience  to  be  Christianized  and  made  objectively 
present  and  powerful  in  the  Church,  which  is  the  body  of 
Christ. 

This  truth  of  the  collective  Christian  conscience  — 
which  becomes  localized  and  powerful  in  the  moral  con- 
sciousness of  the  Church,  from  which  it  proceeds  to  judge 
and  to  rectify  human  life  in  all  relations  and  directions  — 
is  a  truth  of  the  moral  oneness  of  the  Christian  body  with 
its  Lord,  which  should  not  be  left  to  Rome  alone,  but  which 
belongs  to  all  communions  of  believers ;  and  this  truth  re- 
ceives practical  formularization  in  the  common  traditions, 
customs,  and  Christian  standards  which  are  to  be  found 
among  all  bodies  of  believers.  Rome  adds  priestly  preten- 
sion to  the  natural  working  of  the  common  Christian  con- 
science, and  perverts  it  by  making  the  priestly  class  the 
authoritative  custodians  and  administrators  of  the  collec- 
tive moral  consciousness  of  Christians.  The  fallacy  of  the 
confessional  lies  not  in  the  truth  that  the  individual  be- 
liever has  an  account  to  render  to  the  general  communion 
of  believers,  but  in  the  error  that  the  priesthood  has  been 


THE   CHRISTIAN   COXSCIENCE  301 

made  the  supreme  representative  and  visible  organ  of  the 
general  moral  consciousness  of  the  body  of  Christ. 

The  duty  of  confession  of  sins  is  not  owed  to  any  vice- 
gerent of  the  public  conscience  of  believers:  it  is  a  duty 
owed  first  from  individuals  to  individuals  in  view  of  the 
general  moral  law  and  order  of  the  Christian  community, 
in  those  cases  where  individuals,  in  their  relation  to  one 
another,  have  offended  that  law  of  the  whole  body ;  and  if 
an  offence  which  may  have  been  committed  involves  the 
whole  Christian  body,  it  may  become  also  a  duty  of  pub- 
lic confession  to  the  Church,  which  has  been  wronged,  and 
not  a  duty  to  be  absolved  through  any  private  penitence. 

A  proper  recognition  of  this  moral  fact  that  there  is  a 
collective  conscience  to  be  regarded  by  the  individual  con- 
science will  serve  to  check  some  evils  which  result  from 
excessive  moral  individualism.  A  merely  subjective  con- 
science—  a  conscience  which  wilfully  and  arbitrarily  breaks 
loose  from  the  collective  moral  consciousness  —  is  a  force  of 
good  let  loose,  and  running  wild,  and  liable  to  fall  into 
some  sudden  moral  catastrophe.  Exaggerated  moral  indi- 
vidualism is  always  in  danger  of  a  fall.  Fanaticism,  and 
extreme  sectarianism  of  all  kinds,  illustrate  the  moral  evil 
which  is  apt  to  follow  the  loss  of  a  deep  sense  of  unity 
with  the  ethical  consciousness  of  the  whole  communion  of 
believers  ;  the  penalties  of  such  isolation  are  often  paid  in 
unsymmetrical  and  unlovable  moral  developments ;  and 
sometimes  even  in  the  loss  of  essential  elements  of  moral 
life.  The  fruitful  tree,  although  a  single  and  self-contained 
growth,  will  strike  its  roots  down  deep  and  spread  them 
wide  in  the  common  soil.  Tliere  is  no  other  law  of  moral 
fruitfulness  in  human  life. 

4.  In  recognizing  this  inter-dependence  and  these  vital 
inter-relations  of  the  individual  and  the  social  Christian 
conscience,  we  are  not  denying  the  true  independence 
of  the  individual  soul  in  its  single  responsibility  to 
its  own  Master  and  Lord.  Rather  from  this  ereneral 
Christian  consciousness  the  individual  conscience  grows 
to  its  own  firmness  and  completeness.  It  takes  the 
common   moral   elements    up   into    its   personal    growth, 


302  CHUISTIAN  ETHICS 

transforms  tliem  into  its  own  vitality,  and  returns  them  in 
its  mature  and  perfect  fruits.  Moreover,  the  individual 
conscience  works  in  turn  down  upon  the  public  Christian 
conscience  from  which  it  springs.  Through  the  individual 
conscience  in  its  personal  quickening  the  public  conscience 
is  to  be  stirred.  By  the  light  which  falls  upon  the  highest 
souls  the  level  plains  are  to  be  illumined.  Because  the 
Christian  Ideal  is  far  from  realized  as  yet  in  the  Christian 
world,  there  is,  and  must  always  be  until  the  kingdom 
of  Christ  fully  comes,  room  and  need  for  the  superior  con- 
sciences of  the  few  who  have  climbed  into  purer  light,  seen 
broader  horizons,  come  nearer  the  eternal  source  of  truth. 
The  leadership  of  the  public  conscience  has  ever  been 
given  to  the  chosen  prophets  to  whom  the  word  of  the 
Lord  came  with  power ;  but  only  the  leadership  of  the 
conscience  of  the  Christian  humanity  of  which  they  are 
members,  not  right  of  separation  at  will  from  it,^r  abso- 
lute independence  of  it,  or  superiority  or  indifference  to  it. 
In  order  to  lead  one  must  become  not  less  but  more  human  ; 
to  lead  the  Christian  conscience  of  a  world  which  is  to  be 
made  Christian,  one  must  have  not  less,  but  more  in  his  own 
soul  of  those  vitalizing  truths  which  are  the  manifestation 
of  the  Spirit  in  the  whole  Christian  world.  The  light 
which  I  see  gathered  on  some  lofty  object  on  the  horizon, 
and  which  may  be  flashed  back  with  dazzling  brilliance 
from  some  single  point,  is  the  light  with  which  that  object 
becomes  illumined,  not  by  taking  itself  out  of  the  common 
sunshine,  but  by  catching  up  the  diffused  radiance,  bring- 
ing many  rays  to  a  clear  focus  through  its  interposi- 
tion, or  reflecting  brightly  from  its  surface  what  else 
would  have  seemed  but  darkly  scattered  light.  The  pure 
individual  conscience,  which  is  set  for  a  beacon  and  a 
sign,  is  the  universal  moral  consciousness  of  an  age  con- 
centrated and  brought  to  a  burning  focus  in  some  single 
reformer's  soul. 

These  quick  individual  consciences  may  be  regarded  as 
the  special  points  of  sensitiveness  to  the  moral  in  the  general 
public  consciousness.  They  have  a  peculiar  power  to  feel 
the  truth.     They  are  the  points  of  keen  moral  resj^onsive-. 


THE   CHRISTIAN   CONSCIENCE  303 

ness  in  the  life  of  the  Christian  community.  And  moral 
progress  requires  the  existence  in  a  community,  and  for  an 
age,  of  such  morally  sensitive  individuality.  Every  town 
and  village  needs  intelligent  men  and  women  who  shall  be 
for  the  community  a  kind  of  conscience  within  the  public 
conscience  ;  who  are  quick  to  discover  and  bold  to  proclaim 
any  moral  danger,  and  who  will  feel  most  deeply  any  public 
shame;  who  will  keep  themselves  in  the  best  light  of  their 
age,  and  reflect  it  on  others  who  may  not  have  reached 
their  levels  of  moral  attainment. 

So  the  social  Christian  conscience  and  the  individually 
illumined  conscience  belong  together,  work  each  upon  the 
other,  and  together  constitute  the  moral  order  on  earth, 
through  which  the  ideal  is  to  be  reached  and  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  to  be  brought  near. 

III.    MEAXS   FOR   THE   CHRISTIAN   EDUCATIOX   OF 
COXSCTEXCE 

These  means  will  be  both  of  a  public  and  private  nature 
corresponding  to  this  twofold  relation  of  every  conscience, 
—  its  social  dependence,  and  its  personal  character. 

The  public  means  for  this  purpose  may  be  summarized 
as  those  customs,  laws,  institutions,  and  organs  of  expres- 
sion of  the  general  sentiment  of  a  community,  which 
represent  the  public  conscience,  and  which,  besides  other 
purposes  for  which  they  exist,  may  serve  to  form  the 
habits  of  the  members  of  the  community  in  the  mould  of 
the  accepted  social  morality. 

1.  One  of  these  public  means  for  the  education  of  con- 
science is  the  public  school.  But  the  question  immedi- 
ately arises,  how  much  may  the  public  school  contribute  to 
the  moral  or  Christian  education  of  the  children  of  the 
people  ? 

There  will  be  little  occasion  for  dispute  wdien  this 
teaching  extends  only  so  far  as  is  plainly  necessary  in 
order  to  fit  youth  to  discharge  the  offices  of  good  citizens, 
and  when  the  moral  teaching  of  the  school  does  not  go 
beyond  the  general  moral   sentiment   of   the  community. 


304  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

The  average  public  virtue  outside  tlie  school  may  set  the 
standard  beneath  which  the  instruction  in  the  school 
should  not  fall.  The  gauge  of  moral  teaching  within  the 
school-room  of  the  state  must  at  least  stand  as  high  as  the 
level  of  moral  principles  at  which  the  public  conscience 
stands  without  the  school-room.  And  the  work  of  bring- 
ing the  children  of  the  state  up  at  least  to  this  level  of 
moral  knowledge  and  practice,  may  justly  be  required  of 
any  system  of  public  education.  Evidently  then  on  this 
principle,  as  public  morals  without  the  school  rise,  the 
moral  teaching  required  within  the  school  may  be  increased. 
As  the  public  sense  of  the  virtue,  for  instance,  of  temper- 
ance, of  the  desirableness  of  industrial  co-operation,  or  of  the 
sacredness  and  happiness  of  the  family,  rises  and  becomes 
strong,  the  public  school  may  be  urged  to  give  increased 
time  to  these  subjects,  and  more  efficient  instruction,  that 
it  may  graduate  children  into  men  and  women  who  shall 
be  thoroughly  trained  up  to  these  moral  standards  of  the 
community. 

But  can  more  than  this  be  fairly  asked  of  the  moral 
instruction  which  is  to  be  given  in  the  public  school? 
Can  the  state  expect,  or  reasonably  require,  its  schools  to 
exceed  the  ideas  of  righteousness  in  which  the  people  gen- 
erally believe  ?  To  answer  the  question  in  the  negative 
would  seem  to  take  all  hope  of  moral  leadership  of  the 
people  from  the  public  school,  and  to  make  it  powerless 
as  a  factor  for  further  progress  towards  moral  ideals  among 
the  people.  The  school  might  still  retain  moral  influence 
and  utility  in  preventing  a  community  from  slipping  back- 
wards, but  that  would  be  all  of  its  permissible  moral 
service  to  the  state.  Yet  education  seems  to  contain  an 
ideal  element  in  its  very  intention,  and  to  fail  of  its  full 
scoj)e  and  possibility  if  the  ideal  be  wholly  ignored  in  its 
methods  and  aims.  Should  public  education  be  divested 
entirely  of  this  idealizing  element,  and  become  only  an 
endeavor  to  keep  what  has  already  been  obtained  in  the 
morals  of  the  people,  it  would  obviously  lose  an  inspira- 
tion which  is  necessary  to  the  very  life  of  educational 
effort.     We  must  admit,  therefore,  if  for  no  other  reason 


THE   CHEISTIAN   CONSCIENCE  305 

than  its  own  vital  necessity  as  educative  power,  that  the 
public  school  may  be  expected  in  some  measure  to  tran- 
scend the  actual  standard  and  attainment  of  morals  in 
the  community  around  it,  and  should  seek  to  lead  the 
children  of  the  people  to  further  and  better  moral  accom- 
2)lishment.  To  hold  either  teachers  or  scholars  too  closely 
down  to  the  average  of  moral  opinions,  might  prove  fatal 
to  the  life  of  the  public  school.  No  educational  work  can 
be  successfully  carried  on  except  in  some  felt  presence  of 
the  ideal.  The  only  question,  therefore,  to  be  considered, 
relates  to  the  degree  in  which  education  in  jDublic  schools 
may  be  carried  beyond  the  generally  recognized  ideas  and 
standards  of  life  in  the  community  which  supports  the 
schools. 

Little  practical  difficulty  will  be  experienced  so  long  as 
only  higher  ideas  of  generally  admitted  virtues  are  held 
up  in  the  public  schools,  or  larger  measures  of  common 
duties  are  insisted  upon.  In  a  community  which  believes 
in  honesty,  temperance,  and  friendliness,  teaching  more 
honesty  in  all  relations  of  life,  or  more  careful  temper- 
ance, or  more  helpful  friendliness,  will  provoke  no  com- 
ment, and  cause  no  trouble.  The  state  by  such  teaching 
only  reacts  morally  upon  the  people  by  means  of  their  own 
virtues. 

But  if  moral  teaching  in  the  public  school  should 
advance  so  far  beyond  the  received  beliefs  of  the  com- 
munity as  to  teach  new  modes  of  virtue ;  as,  for  example, 
if  there  should  be  inculcated  some  socialistic  conceptions 
of  human  relations  and  duties,  whicli  may  possibly  be 
men's  coming  virtues,  but  which  are  not  yet  grasped  by 
the  common  moral  sense  of  the  people  ;  or  if  the  public 
school  should  teach  as  morals  certain  ideas  of  right  and 
truth,  which  may  be  the  ethical  conceptions  of  a  portion 
only  of  the  community ;  as,  for  example,  certain  religious 
conceptions  of  moral  obligation;  —  then  the  question  would 
very  likely  be  raised :  Has  the  public  school  kept  within 
its  proper  limits  ?  Has  it  not  gone  so  far  beyond  the  com- 
munity as  to  forfeit  its  own  claim  on  the  community  as  a 
public  school? 


306  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

Theoretically  there  is  no  moral  or  religious  instruction 
which  may  not  fall  Avithin  the  province  of  the  public 
school,  provided  only  the  community  which  maintains  it 
be  ready  for  it.  But  practically  the  public  school  is  so 
closely  related  to  the  people  that  it  cannot  be  expected, 
nor  should  it  be  required,  greatly  to  exceed  the  needs  of 
education  which  the  people  may  be  otherwise  led  to 
desire.  And  its  moral  and  religious  teaching  cannot  justly 
(that  is,  in  due  recognition  of  all  the  interests  which  are 
to  be  combined  in  it)  be  carried  to  such  an  extent  as  to 
cause  serious  division  in  the  community  over  its  teachings. 
The  rights  of  all  to  the  public  school  set  necessary  limits 
to  its  extension.  Its  moral  and  especially  its  religious 
teachings  must  consequently  be  kept  on  the  lines,  and  held 
well  within  the  limits,  which  are  to  be  determined  by  the 
general  harmonies  of  individual  consciences  and  of  relig- 
ious beliefs.  In  some  communities  it  may  be  permitted 
without  offence  to  go  farther  in  these  directions  than  in 
others  ;  in  them  all  the  extension  of  its  teaching  should  be 
limited  by  a  just  regard  for  the  general  moral  and  religious 
consciousness  of  the  people  whom  the  school  represents 
and  for  whose  benefit  it  exists.  More  than  this,  either 
in  morals  or  in  religion,  if  desirable,  must  be  supplied 
by  the  voluntary  efforts  of  those  classes  who  see  the  need 
and  hence  believe  in  making  efforts  to  supply  it.  Usually 
the  duties  may  be  taught,  even  though  the  sanctions  of 
duty  may  be  left  to  the  different  religious  beliefs  of  the 
people. 

2.  Another  public  means  of  moral  education  is  the 
pulpit.  The  power  of  the  living  voice  in  the  pulpit  is 
not  to  be  superseded  by  any  form  of  literature.  Although 
Sunday  newspapers  furnish  their  allspice  of  wordly  season- 
ing for  the  Sabbath  day;  although  books  multiply,  and 
the  means  of  liberal  education  are  happily  brought,  in 
many  branches  of  them,  within  reach  of  the  hands  of  the 
people,  so  that  the  lecturer  has  well-nigh  disappeared 
from  the  popular  platform,  and  even  the  political  orator 
is  becoming  an  echo  and  tradition  of  the  past;  neverthe- 
less, so  long  as  the  Church  continues  to  confess  its  belief 


THE   CHEISTIAN   COXSCIEXCE  307 

in  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  the  Spirit  works  as  a  living  influ- 
ence through  personal  contacts  from  soul  to  soul  afire 
with  truth,  Ave  may  be  assured  that  the  spoken  word  of 
the  Lord  Avill  not  lack  audience,  and  the  Christian  pulpit, 
if  it  does  not  lose  its  touch  of  vital  faith  upon  the  living 
Christ,  will  never  fail  of  its  prophetic  place  and  power  in 
the  world. 

The  social  function  of  the  pulpit  has  always  been  largely 
ethical ;  the  preacher  is  the  teacher  of  righteousness.  The 
prophets  of  old  were  religious  statesmen  and  moral  leaders 
of  the  people.  And  the  great  doctrinal  epistles  branch 
directly  into  fruitful  precepts  for  conduct.  A  large  por- 
tion of  the  apostolic  teaching  is  ethical.  It  is  peculiarly 
the  office  of  the  Christian  pulpit  to  apply  Christian  truths 
to  the  conduct  of  life.  This  ethical  function  of  the  Chris- 
tian ministry  is  not  destined  to  grow  less,  as  the  social 
problems  of  modern  life  increase  in  complexity.  The 
preacher  must  fix  his  eye  on  personal  character ;  and  the 
pulpit  should  be  charged  also  with  the  message  of  social 
righteousness  and  peace.  It  may  be  said  that  the  modern 
pulpit  is  characterized  by  an  increasing  ethical  earnestness. 
Social  ethics  especially  attract  as  never  before  the  attention 
of  the  followers  of  the  Son  of  man.  There  is  much  unused 
sociological  material  for  the  pulpit  to  draw  from  in  the 
prophetic  literature  of  Israel;  and  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  is  the  rich  mine  of  teaching  for  the  new  social  eth- 
ics which  the  world  needs.  But  it  should  be  remembered 
that  light  as  well  as  heat  is  needed  in  Christian  sociology, 
and  the  Christian  social  prophet  needs  now  to  be  a  particu- 
larly intelligent  prophet.  While  the  pulpit  may  be  some- 
times compelled  in  its  prophetic  office  to  become  a  means 
of  flaming  ethical  agitation,  the  Christian  ministry  are  also 
required  by  fidelity  to  the  "kingdom  and  the  patience 
which  are  in  Jesus"  ^  to  have  calm,  open  eyes  for  whatever 
is  good  and  true  in  existing  institutions,  and  to  be  quick 
to  recognize  whatever  in  modern  life  is  really  gathering 
with  the  Christ.  While  the  preacher  of  the  gospel  of  the 
kingdom  may  often  be  called  to  speak  brave  words  against 

1  Rev.  1.  9. 


308  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

social  evils,  and  to  rebuke  grasping  greed  even  witliin  the 
Church,  and  to  bring  all  moral  forces  at  his  command  to  bear 
at  the  points  of  wrong  and  waste  in  the  lives  of  his  fellow- 
men  it  is  likewise  true  that  in  the  interest  of  the  ethics  of 
reform  the  pulpit  may  sometimes  be  called  to  resist  the 
bigotry  of  reform.^  Broad  ethical  training  and  sober  soci- 
ological study  are  becoming  indispensable  requisites  in  the 
education  of  a  Christian  ministry  for  the  pulpit  and  the 
work  of  the  Church  in  modern  society.  With  such  training, 
and  by  means  of  the  moral  sagacity,  which  should  be 
sought  as  a  gift  of  the  Spirit,  for  the  application  of  the 
gospel  to  life,  the  pulpit  may  become  an  increasing  power 
in  the  community. 

3.  Another  public  means  for  the  attainment  of  the 
Christian  good  is  the  Christian  College. 

Education,  in  any  Christian  idea  of  it,  is  for  service. 
The  college  exists  not  merely  for  the  sake  of  culture,  but 
for  the  good  of  the  people.  It  should  represent  whatever 
is  high  and  worthiest  in  the  striving  of  a  nation.  It  is 
called  to  moral  leadership.  It  should  not  lose  its  power 
by  institutional  cowardice.  It  does  not  fulfil  its  mission 
simply  in  fitting  a  number  of  men  to  earn  their  livelihood 
by  their  brains.  It  should  give  light  for  the  life  of  the 
people.  The  Christian  idea  of  education  saves  it  from 
Pharisaism,  and  consecrates  it  to  humanity. 

In  New  England  the  earlier  colleges  were  founded  and  built  up  not  for 
the  sake  of  learning  merely,  but  patriotically  and  religiously  for  the  country 
and  for  the  Church.  University  settlements  and  university  extension  in 
the  coming  years  may  serve  to  prevent  learning  from  degenerating  into 
professionalism,  or  becoming  a  cloistered  virtue  without  wholesome  part 
in  the  life  of  the  people. 

4.  The  modern  newspaper  is  another  means  by  which 
the  public  conscience  may  be  educated,  or  by  which  it  may 
also  be  debased  and  misled.  The  press  is  becoming  the 
daily  judgment  of  society.  A  glaring  light  of  publicity  is 
shed  by  it  over  all  things  human.  On  the  whole  the  effect 
of  this  light  of  publicity  is  good.     Things  evil  love  the 

1  It  needs  to  be  added  that  preachers  as  social  prophets  should  be  sure  of 
their  facts  before  beini;  bold  in  denunciation. 


THE    CHRISTIAN   COXSCIENCE  809 

darkness.  But  the  press  seems  also  at  tiraes  to  be  a  social 
impertinence ;  some  newspapers  become  like  the  plague 
of  the  frogs  in  Egypt,  overrunning  all  the  houses  and  enter- 
ing into  every  chamber.  Yet  the  daily  press  offers  a  broad 
and  honorable  field  for  Christian  talent.  Conscience  in 
journalism  may  become  a  mighty  power.  Through  the 
incessant  influence  of  an  intelligent  and  honorable  jour- 
nalism, all  good  causes  may  be  helped  rapidly  forward  on 
their  way  of  conquest.^ 

The  religious  newspaper  is  a  modern  instrumentality  for 
helping  forward,  or  for  hindering,  the  coming  of  the  kingdom 
of  God.  But  although  its  aims  and  ideals  are  professedly 
religious,  from  want  of  intelligence  or  from  lack  of  love  its 
influence  may  become  obstructive  and  divisive.  Eeaders 
of  the  Life  of  Frederick  Denison  Maurice  will  recall  with 
what  decision  and  courage  in  his  earlier  life  he  laid  down 
the  wager  of  battle  against  the  religious  papers  of  England, 
because  he  regarded  them  all  as  representative  of  sects  and 
parties,  and  hence  in  the  way  of  the  progress  of  the  true 
kingdom  of  God.^  Denominational  papers,  it  must  be 
admitted,  have  often  been  narrow,  divisive,  and  obstructive, 
and  their  methods  of  sectarian  conflict  have  by  no  means 
been  held  above  reproach.  They  have  usuall}^  represented 
the  traditional  rather  than  the  advancing  religious  thought 
of  their  day.  This  has  been  their  natural  tendency  because 
denominationalism  thrives  from  its  own  separativeness,  and 
the  denominational  organ  will  naturally  embody  the  dis- 
tinctive spirit  of  the  sect  which  maintains  it.  Had  there 
been  religious  papers  in  Jerusalem  at  the  time  of  our  Lord's 
ministry,  those  papers  would  naturally  have  been  edited  by 
the  scribes,  and  would  doubtless  have  reflected  the  prevail- 
ing opinions  of  the  Jewish  schools. 

Yet  despite  those  tendencies  of  religious  journalism  which 
led  Mr.  Maurice  to  reject  all  the  organs  of  the  schools  and 
the  sects,  and  notwithstanding  the  unfortunate  tone  and 
limited   knoAvledge  which  have   made  the   name   of   relig- 

1  The  question  has  been  raised  Avhether  it  mic^ht  not  be  advantageous  to 
endow  newspapers  as  independent  organs  of  moral  opinion. 

2  Life  and  Letters,  vol.  i.  p.  241  sq. ;  ii.  p.  Si3. 


310  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

ious  papers  often  a  byword  among  persons  of  large  and 
luminous  intelligence,  nevertheless,  religious  journalism 
has  been  instrumental  in  furthering  important  movements, 
in  keeping  the  missionary  interests  of  the  Church  before 
the  people,  and  in  affording  also  a  popular  arena  for  the 
discussion  of  practical  as  well  as  theological  questions. 
Occasionally  a  religious  paper  has  succeeded  in  kee2)ing 
itself  up  to  a  higher  level  of  Christian  comprehension,  and 
breathing  a  sweeter  spirit  through  its  editorial  columns, 
and  then  its  influence  has  been  broadly  enlightening  and 
ennobling  ;  on  the  whole,  the  religious  press  must  be  ac- 
cepted as  a  quite  indispensable  modern  means  for  the  main- 
tenance and  further  working  out  of  Christian  good  among 
the  people,  —  and  the  remainder  of  its  wrath  Providence 
will  restrain ! 

5.  All  these  means  of  training  the  Christian  conscience, 
and  realizing  Christian  ideals  of  society,  would  prove  fruit- 
less were  it  not  for  the  constant  and  multiplied  influences 
of  personal  Christian  life  and  example.  Christ  founded  his 
kingdom  in  men.  He  concerned  himself  not  in  establish- 
ing institutions,  but  in  making  men  of  his  Spirit.  The 
apostles  were  first  chosen  and  trained,  and  then  they  were 
left  to  form  the  Christian  Church.  Jesus  did  the  founda- 
tion work  for  all  Christian  institutions  in  his  training  of 
the  twelve.  He  would  have  inverted  the  order  of  divine 
grace  had  he  sought  to  build  his  Church  first,  and  to  have 
fitted  Peter  afterwards  to  be  his  apostle. 

The  original  method  of  Jesus  in  making  men  Christian, 
and  through  Christian  men  forming  and  securing  Christian 
institutions,  can  never  be  wholly  abandoned.  No  institu- 
tionalism  can  redeem  society.  Charitable  organizations 
cannot  drain  the  source  of  evil.  State  control  cannot 
grasp  the  forces  of  righteousness.  Society  can  never  be 
saved  by  bureaucracy,  —  whether  it  be  the  bureaucracy  of 
ecclesiasticism,  or  of  some  socialistic  pattern.  The  heal- 
ing touch  of  personal  influence  is  always  needed  among  men. 

The  particular  means  for  the  personal  education  of  the  Christian  con- 
science we  pass  by  for  the  present  as  they  may  be  more  couveniently 
considered  in  connection  witli  our  duties  towards  ourselves. 


THE   CHRISTIAN   CONSCIENCE  311 

Before  we  proceed  to  the  discussion  of  particular  duties, 
several  general  questions  with  regard  to  conscience  remain 
to  be  considered. 

lY.    CERTAIN    QUESTIONS   CONCERNING   CONSCIENCE 

Some  of  these  are  of  preliminary  importance  as  our 
views  with  regard  to  them  will  affect  our  further  judg- 
ments concerning  specific  duties. 

1.  One  of  these  inquiries  relates  to  what  Rothe  has  hap- 
pily distinguished  as  "  the  individual  moral  instance."  ^ 
The  law  is  general ;  duties  are  specific.  The  command- 
ment is  exceeding  broad  ;  obligations  are  sometimes  very 
personal.  The  law  is  to  be  applied  at  individual  points, 
and  in  personal  instances  of  it.  Some  ethical  writers 
have  pointed  out  what  they  call  "  the  fallacy  of  the  par- 
ticular case."  How  far  then,  if  at  all,  may  the  moral 
imperative  be  modified  or  mollified  by  the  requirements 
of  individual  life,  in  the  circumstances  of  the  particular 
case  ? 

Moralists  have  agreed  that  many  things  may  be  regarded 
as  morally  allowable,  and  that  under  the  general  principles 
of  morality  some  space  must  be  left  for  the  play  of  indi- 
vidual preferences.  Yet  much  of  the  practical  wisdom  of 
life,  which  is  gained  often  through  no  little  perplexity, 
consists  in  knowing  in  many  instances  just  where  the 
morally  necessary  may  end,  and  where  the  morally  per- 
missible begins. 

We  are  accustomed  to  say  that  such  and  such  things  are 
morally  indifferent.  If  we  mean  by  the  morally  indiffer- 
ent simply  those  actions  or  choices  which  are  left  indeter- 
minate by  any  general  maxims  of  morals,  it  must  be 
admitted  that  a  great  variety  of  possible  actions  falls 
within  the  category  of  things  innocent  in  themselves,  or 
morally  indifferent.  But  this  is  only  saying  that  gen- 
eral rules  cannot  cover  all  possible  cases ;  that  no  moral 
maxims  can  include  all  conceivable  instances  which  may 
present  themselves  for  individual  determination.     But  if 

1  Theol.  Ethik,^  805. 


312  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

we  mean  by  this  common  phrase,  the  morally  indifferent, 
that  any  action  of  the  will,  in  any  sphere,  can  be  without 
moral  character  and  is  itself  an  act  of  moral  indiffer- 
ence, —  that  is  quite  another  matter.  For,  strictly  speak- 
ing, no  choice  of  a  moral  agent  can  be  morally  colorless. 
Each  volition,  irrespective  of  its  object,  is  the  act  of  a 
moral  being,  and  as  such  is  bound  up  with  all  his  other 
choices  as  a  part  of  the  moral  habit  of  the  man.  No  per- 
sonal act,  if  it  be  considered  in  all  its  relations,  can  be 
deemed  to  be  absolutely  morally  neutral.  Only  uncon- 
scious cerebration,  or  automatic  movements,  like  respira- 
tion, may  be  so  regarded ;  but  whatever  enters  the  field  of 
human  consciousness,  is  thereby  in  the  field  of  moral  con- 
sciousness, and  proceeds  among  moral  relations  according 
to  the  whole  moral  movement  of  the  life.  What  may 
thus  be  left  morally  indeterminate  under  general  law  is 
no  longer  indifferent,  but  takes  on  ethical  character  in  the 
individual  relations  and  under  the  light  of  the  personal 
consciousness  in  which  it  is  performed.  Strictly  speaking, 
nothing  is  morally  allowable  merely,  and  not  obligatory, 
which  may  become  my  personal  act  or  exist  for  a  moment 
as  a  part  of  my  personal  history.  It  is  only  because  we 
may  not  be  able  to  determine  the  moral  relations  of  many 
acts,  or  to  discern  their  subtle  and  intimate  relations  to 
character,  that  we  are  ever  conscious  of  them  as  indiffer- 
ent or  speak  of  them  as  things  dependent  on  our  momen- 
tary pleasure.  Our  amusements  and  recreations,  the 
laughter  and  the  song  of  life,  as  well  as  our  appointed 
tasks  and  serious  responsibilities,  may  with  increasing 
moral  wisdom  fall  into  their  true  place  and  become  happy 
duties,  all  together,  in  the  moral  harmony  of  our  whole 
manhood.  Moral  law  must  leave  much,  it  is  true,  to  the 
individual  instance ;  but  the  personal  instance  itself  falls 
under  the  law,  and  the  riglit  exercise  of  personal  pref- 
erence becomes  a  part  of  the  moral  training  of  the  man. 

For  example,  there  may  be  nothing  in  the  nature  of  moral  law  in  gen- 
eral to  determine  whether  I  shall  take  a  walk  in  one  direction  or  another  ; 
whether  I  walk  up  or  down  the  street  is  equally  allowable,  so  long  as 
I  respect  the  rights  of  others  to  the  sidewalk ;    but  whether  I  choose 


THE   CHRISTIAN   CONSCIENCE  313 

rightly  or  wrongly  in  walking  in  either  direction  will  depend  upon  my 
individual  errand  ;  and  if  I  have  no  errand  except  to  take  the  exercise  of 
a  walk,  then  the  direction  and  the  length  of  my  walk,  and  all  the  choices 
connected  with  that  exercise  will  be  morally  allowable,  yet  not  indiffer- 
ent, so  far  as  with  intelligent  judgment  I  may  order  my  steps  in  accord- 
ance with  the  purpose  which  gives  law  to  that  action,  and  seek  to  bring 
the  details  of  my  movements  into  the  closest  accord  with  my  right  moral 
aim  in  such  exercise. 

We  do  many  things  accidentally,  or  with  moral  indifference, 
simply  because  we  have  not  a  sufficiently  fine  moral  judg- 
ment to  discriminate  between  them,  not  because  they  are 
in  themselves  absolutely  indifferent,  or  without  any  moral 
relations  to  life.  We  have  only  to  suppose  our  moral 
knowledge  indefinitely  increased  in  order  to  imagine  the 
morally  accidental  as  disappearing  entirely  from  our  con- 
duct of  life.  And  indeed  it  is  a  sign  not  only  of  deepening 
moral  purpose,  but  likewise  of  broadening  moral  wisdom, 
if  we  find  that  the  range  of  the  morally  accidental  in  our 
conduct  grows  less  and  less,  while  more  of  the  daily  little 
things  of  life  are  seen  to  be  part  and  portion  of  our  clear 
duty ;  if  the  morally  allowable  blends  more  and  more  with 
our  duties  in  one  fine  moral  sense  of  life.  We  shall  thus 
gain  a  healthful  conscientiousness  in  all  things. 

2.  Another  matter  of  conscience  which  has  been  much 
discussed,  relates  to  the  question  whether  one  can  do  more 
than  it  is  his  duty  to  do.  In  one  of  the  most  Avidely  read 
Christian  books  of  the  second  century,  the  Shepherd  of 
Herman,  said :  "  And  if  you  do  any  good  beyond  what  is 
commanded  by  God,  you  will  gain  for  yourself  more  abun- 
dant glory,  and  will  be  more  honored  by  God  than  you 
would  otherwise  be."  ^  This  conception  of  a  virtue  above 
what  is  required  by  the  law,  which  was  influential  in  the 
development  of  monasticism,  took  definite  form  in  the 
scholastic  doctrine-  of  the  "evangelical  counsels"  and 
works  of  supererogation.  It  was  held  that  there  are  cer- 
tain virtues,  or  degrees  of  virtue,  which  heaven  does  not 
indeed  require,  but  with  which  heaven  may  be  well  pleased. 
They  are  not  necessary,  but  they  are  commendable ;  and 
by  means  of  them  a  higher  perfection  is  to  be  gained  than 

1  B.  iii.  Similitude  5,  c.  3. 


314  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

the  law  with  its  commandments  contemplates.  They  are 
the  superior  virtues  of  those  who  have  taken  upon  them- 
selves special  vows  of  poverty,  chastity,  or  obedience,  —  they 
are  the  merits  of  the  saints. 

The  distinction  between  the  commandment,  and  what  is  added  to  it 
beyond  that  which  is  due,  is  to  be  found  in  Origen  (see  references  in 
Herzog,  Real-Ency.  Art.,  Consilia  Evangelica).  Thomas  Aquinas  regards 
the  opera  supererogationis  as  better  means  to  perfection,  yet  lie  says  that 
tlie  perfection  consists  principally  and  essentially  in  the  commandments, 
secondarily  and  instrumentally  in  the  counsels  {iSumma,  ii.  2,  108,  184). 
This  doctrine  was  fully  developed  in  the  monastic  Catholicism  ;  the  re- 
formers rejected  with  vigor  the  whole  conceiDtion  of  meritorious  works  as 
unfounded  in  the  Scriptures  and  contrary  to  the  righteousness  of  faith. 
Later  Roman  Catholic  writers  have  been  less  inclined  to  emphasize  this 
distinction ;  but  Mohler  took  up  the  defence  of  this  doctrine  with  the 
assertion  that  ' '  the  delicacy  and  fineness  of  the  idea  of  works  which  are 
more  than  satisfying,"  escapes  the  reformers  because  they  do  not  admit 
the  thought  that  man  can  be  free  from  sins  like  impurity  and  immoderate 
ambition,  etc.  {Symbolik,  s.  186).  His  contention  called  forth  replies 
from  many  Protestant  German  writers  ;  see  Baur,  Gegensatz  des  Katholi- 
cismus  unci  Protestantismus,  s.  301 ;  Julius  Miiller,  Christian  Doctrine  of 
Sin,  vol.  i.  pp.  50-58. 

We  may  assume  that  an  ethical  distinction  which  we 
find  appearing  very  early  in  the  history  of  Christian 
thought,  Avhich  lies  at  the  root  of  a  vast  monastic  system, 
and  which  in  one  form  or  another  persists  in  modern 
literature,  has  some  truth  at  the  core  of  it;  yet  a  sound 
moral  sense  hesitates  to  admit  that  there  can  be  a  perfec- 
tion to  be  coveted  in  excess  of  the  common  obligations  of 
human  life.  If,  therefore,  we  seek  first  to  find  the  truth 
at  the  core  of  this  doctrine  of  superior  virtue,  we  may 
then  more  easily  detect  the  fallacy  of  the  so-called  "  evan- 
gelical counsels."  The  distinction  does  not  seem  at  first 
thought  to  be  unreal  between  duties  that  are  plainly 
required  and  moral  acts  which  are  commendable.  We 
may  desire  a  character  to  show  certain  common  fruits  of 
righteousness  without  expecting  it  to  favor  us  with  a  rare 
beauty  and  fragrance  in  the  blossoming  of  its  virtues ;  the 
fruit  may  be  required,  but  the  fairness  and  sweetness  of 
the  flower  might  seem  to  be  an  added  grace.  Moreover, 
we  recognize  as  possible   different  degrees  of  the   same 


THE   CHRISTIAN   CONSCIENCE  315 

virtue  ;  and  it  is  not  deemed  obligatory  that  all  the  virtues 
should  be  combined  in  a  single  character  in  some  superla- 
tive measure  of  each.  Love  may  seem  to  be  a  super- 
abundant energy  in  some  rare  natures.  So  one  of  the 
ablest  of  modern  Roman  Catholic  controversialists  finds 
in  the  nature  of  love  a  principle  by  which  he  defends  the 
doctrine  of  meritorious  works  beyond  the  requirements  of 
the  law :  "  It  is,"  says  Mohler,  "  the  way  of  love  which 
stands  far  higher,  infinitely  higher  than  mere  law,  never 
to  rest  satisfied  with  its  manifestations,  and  to  be  always 
inventive,  so  that  believers  of  this  sort  often  seem  to 
men  who  stand  on  a  lower  step  to  be  enthusiasts,  vision- 
aries, or  fanatics."  ^  This  is  true,  that  love  as  a  motive  is 
more  than  the  commandment ;  that  works  done  from  love 
are  works  of  a  higher  order  than  those  wrought  in  slavish 
obedience.  The  obedience  of  love  is  more  pleasing  than 
the  obedience  of  fear.  But  this  difference  in  motives  does 
not  necessarily  imply  a  corresponding  difference  between 
the  ideal  of  the  law  and  the  ideal  of  love.  Objectively,  the 
law  may  aim  at  the  same  perfection  which  love  delights 
to  fulfil.  In  this  superiority  of  love  as  a  motive  lies  the 
truth  which  has  given  vitality  to  the  idea  of  some  superior 
virtue  possible  to  the  saints.  Love  as  a  jo3^ous  motive 
stands  (as  Mohler  would  say)  far  higher  than  law,  and 
it  will  be  always  seeking  to  find  new  ways  of  showing  its 
presence ;  love  is  too  rich  and  overflowing  ever  to  contain 
itself  simply  in  the  measures  of  a  calculating  conscientious- 
ness; love  as  love  has  "the  more  abundant  glory,"  of 
which  the  angelic  shepherd  taught  Hermas.  But  when 
we  have  recognized  this  truth,  we  have  also  discovered  the 
fallacy  in  this  conception  of  a  perfection  which  is  more 
than  the  law  commands.  For  the  fount  of  the  error  lies 
in  a  confusion  of  the  subjective  value  of  motives,  and  the 
objective  good  which  is  to  be  attained.  The  law  looks 
for  the  perfection  which  is  to  be  reached  through  love. 
Protestantism  is  right  in  affirming  the  ideal  perfection  of 
the  law ;  yet  ancient  fathers  and  modern  Catholics  are  not 
without  truth  in  the  feeling  which  is  at  the  heart  of  the 

1  Symholik,  s.  186.  .    . 


316  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

false  doctrine  of  meritorious  works,  that  love  is  the  fulfil- 
linof  of  the  law. 

This  fallacy  of  regarding  the  law  as  satisfied  with  a  less 
degree  of  virtue  than  love  can  apprehend  has  been  ren- 
dered possible  through  the  mistake  of  overlooking,  as 
Rothe  has  observed,  "  the  individual  moral  instance."  ^ 
The  law  needs  to  be  individualized  in  its  special  applica- 
tion to  each  particular  obligation.  What  might  be  a  work 
of  supererogation,  and  therefore  not  a  duty,  to  one  man, 
may  fall  within  the  special  obligation  of  another's  life. 
The  commandment  of  the  law  is  universal ;  the  particular 
duty  under  the  law  is  to  be  determined  in  relation  to  all 
the  conditions,  relations,  opportunities,  of  the  life  of  each 
individual.  Thus  to  follow  Christ  is  the  duty  of  all 
believers ;  but  in  St.  Peter's  individual  instance  ,to  follow 
Christ  meant  to  leave  all  and  to  go  with  the  Master 
wherever  He  went,  as  the  seventy  disciples  were  not 
required  to  do.  There  is,  however,  no  superfluous  merit 
in  doing  that  which,  under  our  common  human  obliga- 
tions, the  particular  requirements  of  one's  calling  or 
opportunity  make  it  his  duty  to  do.  Morality,  as  thus 
specialized  in  the  personal  instance  and  fitted  to  the  form 
of  the  individual  task,  is  always  obligatory,  and  with  an 
absolute  obligation.  The  individualized  duty,  the  per- 
sonal task,  be  it  great  or  small,  high  as  the  joy  of  martyr- 
dom, or  lowly  as  the  humble  service  of  the  home,  love 
ought  always  to  fulfil. 

The  Christ  came  to  do  the  Father's  will  in  his  Messianic 
life,  and  to  meet  his  appointed  hour.  He  could  not  have 
done  only  what  other  men  did  —  he  could  not  have  done  less 
than  it  was  appointed  him  to  do  —  and  have  remained  sin- 
less. There  was  nothing  more  that  he  could  have  done, 
and  become  thereby  more  acceptable  to  God.  He  fulfilled 
all  righteousness  in  his  perfect  obedience  unto  death.^ 

1  rheolofjische  Ethik,  §§  805-808. 

2  If  this  necessary  moral  application  of  general  law  to  the  individual 
instance  should  be  so  conceived  as  to  justify  an  individual  making  his  life 
a  law  unto  itself,  that  would  be  a  perversion  of  it  into  antinoniianism  as 
harmful  as  the  doctrine  of  the  evangelical  councils.  It  liardly  needs  to  be 
observed  that  what  has  been  said  above  relates  to  the  application  of  the  moral 


THE   CHRISTIAN   CONSCIENCE  317 

3.  In  this  connection  we  may  consider,  also,  those  moral 
perplexities  which  arise  in  cases  of  the  apparent  collision 
of  duties.  Many  of  the  questions  of  casuistry  result  from 
such  seeming  conflict  of  duties  ;  the  casuist  seeks  to  deter- 
mine which  among  possible  moral  actions  is  the  more 
probable  course  of  duty.  Practical  life  abounds  in  such 
questions,  and  the  decision  of  them  is  not  infrequently 
a  severe  trial  to  a  sensitive  conscience. 

We  cannot,  however,  admit  any  real  conflict  of  duties. 
Strictly  speaking,  in  such  cases  of  moral  perplexity  there 
is  a  collision  of  moral  interests,  but  not  of  duties.  There 
is  at  any  moment  but  one  duty,  the  obligation  which  is  the 
moral  resultant  from  all  the  forces  acting  upon  the  con- 
science ;  — as  the  movement  of  a  body  under  the  influence 
of  conflicting  forces  is  the  resultant  motion  of  them  all. 
The  collision  may  often  be  sharp  between  opposing  moral 
interests  which  have  claims  upon  us  ;  but  the  action  to 
which  we  are  in  duty  bound  can  be  but  one  act. 

These  confusions  of  moral  interests  are  a  part  of  the 
moral  discipline  and  education  of  this  present  world.  They 
may  arise  from  some  crossing  of  the  lines  in  which  our 
lives  are  connected  with  one  another.  A  single  act  which 
may  seem  simple  enough  in  its  direct  consequences,  we  see 
cannot  be  carried  through  without  touching,  perhaps  disas- 
trously, other  relationships,  or  entangling  other  interests 
which  have  their  claims  upon  our  consideration.  A  col- 
lision of  duties  in  such  instances  seems  to  us  unavoidable. 
How  shall  we  choose  ?  What  shall  be  the  determining 
principle  of  conduct? 

Moreover,  we  recognize  different  moral  aims  of  our 
endeavors  in  different  spheres  of  action,  all  of  which  are 
ethically  good ;  but  the  course  of  conduct  which  is  neces- 
sary for  the  attainment  of  one  end  may  seem  at  times  to 
cross  at  right  angles  the  line  of  action  to  be  pursued  if 
another  justifiable  aim  of  life  is  to  be  gained.  How  shall 
this  conflict  of  moral  aims  be  reconciled?     The  life-work 

law,  not  to  any  makinoc  or  becoming  a  law  unto  one's  self.  The  "personal 
instance  "  is  always  to  be  in  harmony  with  the  law,  an  instance  of  law  in  the 
concrete  reality  of  its  obligation.     See  Rothe,  opus  cit.  §  807. 


318  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

may  be  chosen  in  view  of  some  single  end  which  it  is 
lightly  deemed  should  be  made  supreme ;  yet  other  ends, 
though  regarded  as  subordinate,  have  their  claims,  and 
cannot  be  absolutely  sacrificed,  without  a  sense  of  moral 
dissatisfaction,  even  for  the  laudable  purpose  of  pressing 
forward  to  the  one  chosen  goal.  Thus  the  claims  of  public 
and  private  life  often  present  conflicting  interests.  A 
soldier's  orders  may  require  resolute  forge tfuln ess  of 
home,  and  the  claims  of  his  family,  and  his  duty  to  his 
children.  For  the  hour  of  soldierly  daring  these  sacred 
interests  of  the  lives  of  others  in  his  life  must  be  held  in 
abeyance  ;  they  are  not  indeed  denied,  for  they  are  kept 
sacred  still  in  the  brave  man's  heart.  Yet  there  is  but  one 
duty  to  be  followed  with  all  the  heart.  That  only  is  to  be 
done  which  conscience  sees  to  be  the  duty  of  the  hour. 
Hence  a  decision  of  the  duty  to  be  done  brings  with  it  a 
sense  of  peace.  Tliere  is  always  a  certain  air  of  peaceful- 
ness  pervading  a  clear  consciousness  of  duty.  A  sense 
of  duty  which  does  not  bring  with  it  a  great  restfulness 
of  soul,  is  an  imperfect  sense  of  duty.  Duty  is  unity  of 
heart.  It  is  the  harmony  of  the  will  with  opportunity. 
There  is  nothing  under  the  whole  he?vven  so  absolutely 
tranquil  and  serene  as  a  perfect  sense  of  duty.  Hence, 
also,  the  strength  of  it  —  the  strength  of  the  soul  which  is 
kept  in  perfect  peace. 

Great  differences  are  to  be  observed  among  conscien- 
tious men  in  their  power  to  come  to  clear  and  restful 
moral  decision.  It  should  be  the  aim  of  education  to  cul- 
tivate a  conscience  which  shall  be  quick  to  discover  under 
any  circumstances  the  one  duty  which  will  prove  to  be 
the  true  reconciliation  of  conflicting  claims  upon  the  con- 
science. 

There  was  no  collision  of  duties  in  the  life  of  Jesus. 
There  was  no  hesitation  in  his  action,  no  apparent  moment 
of  deliberation  even  concerning  what  he  should  do  next, 
or  what  was  the  right  word  directly  to  be  spoken.  His 
deeds  were  instantaneous  crystallizations  of  his  thought. 
His  words  flow  immediately  out  of  his  purpose,  and  fill 
with  perfect  truth  the  occasion  by  which  they  were  called 


THE   CHRISTIAN   CONSCIENCE  319 

forth.  Yet  no  man  lias  ever  lived  among  more  complex 
and  conflicting  claims.  Eager  interests  of  the  present,  and 
hiofhest  concerns  of  the  fnture,  were  at  the  same  time  com- 
mitted  to  his  charge.  There  were  works  of  healing  to  be 
wrought  for  poor  sick  folks  in  the  streets  of  Capernaum, 
and  a  world's  redemption  also  to  be  accomplished.  The 
tender  claims  of  his  mother  were  to  be  reconciled  with  the 
public  call  upon  him  even  in  his  boyhood  to  speak  with  a 
nobler  Avisdom  in  the  temple  among  the  doctors  of  the  law. 
The  multitude  thronged  him,  and  his  disciples  needed  his 
private  interpretations  of  the  parables.  The  national  expec- 
tations of  the  prophets  of  old  were  to  be  transfigured  through 
his  life  into  the  glorious  hope  of  the  world's  future.  The 
law  was  to  be  done  away  in  a  new  commandment  which 
should  prove  its  fulfilment.  God  and  man  were  to  be  made 
one  through  his  life  and  by  his  death.  He  was  to  leave  his 
disciples,  to  be  seen  no  more  by  them  in  Judea  or  on  some 
mountain  of  Galilee  ;  yet  he  was  not  to  leave  them  comfort- 
less, and  his  going  from  them  was  to  be  the  coming  of  his 
Spirit  to  the  world.  It  is  impossible  to  conceive  a  life 
busied  with  more  varied  tasks,  called  by  more  incessant 
demands  upon  its  energies,  and  occupied  with  vaster  prob- 
lems, present,  future,  eternal  —  all  to  be  met  and  answered 
in  three  short  years  of  earthly  opportunity; — yet  in 
that  brief  life,  into  which  time  and  eternity  poured  their 
tremendous  issues,  the  really  wonderful  thing  is  that  there 
was  no  indecision,  no  note  of  inward  perplexity,  no  doubt 
concerning  the  will  of  God  immediately  to  be  done,  no 
mistake  as  to  when  his  hour  was  come. 

This  example  in  Christ  of  perfect  unity  of  life,  is  the 
ideal  of  the  Christian  conscience  amid  the  conflicts  and 
confusions  of  the  world.  A  fine  moral  tact  and  power  of 
almost  instantaneous  discovery  of  the  single  duty  amid 
many  claims,  is  a  moral  acquisition  which  is  to  be  coveted 
among  the  best  gifts  of  the  Spirit.  But  it  is  not  to  be 
gained  at  once,  nor  except  through  much  discipline  and 
prayer. 


320  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 


V.   THE  CLASSIFICATION   OF   DUTIES 

Moralists  have  adopted  widely  different  schemes  for  the 
classification  of  duties.  These  are  so  numerous,  so  varied, 
and  so  changeable  in  their  aspects,  as  they  are  presented 
by  the  shifting  circumstances  of  life,  that  they  appear  to 
defy  all  classification,  and  to  make  any  attempt  to  reduce 
them  to  a  system  seems  almost  a  hopeless  task.  Even 
though  we  select  a  few  general  obligations  as  the  primary 
ones,  still  these  few  selected  duties  will  be  found  to  be 
capable  of  almost  endless  permutations  ;  though  our  bits 
of  glass  be  few  and  of  simple  colors,  in  the  kaleidoscope 
of  human  life,  which  is  always  turning,  they  will  fall  into 
endlessly  diversified  combinations. 

The  most,  therefore,  that  any  writer  on  ethics  can  hope 
to  accomplish,  will  be  to  find  some  method  of  classification 
that  may  answer  for  a  general  description  of  the  typical 
kinds  of  duties;  we  may  seek  to  follow  the  large  and 
flowing  outlines  of  the  moral  landscape  which  lies  before  us 
with  its  changing  lights  and  its  indefinite  diversity  of  details. 

Three  general  principles  of  classification  have  been 
adopted  in  the  books  of  ethics. 

1.  One  method  of  classification  has  been  derived  from 
the  nature  of  the  action  of  the  will. 

The  active  intelligence  may  be  differently  characterized 
in  its  manner  of  acting,  as  it  goes  forth  in  several  distinct 
ways  towards  the  highest  good. 

So  Schleiermacher  divided  philosophical  ethics  into  two  main  divisions, 
as  he  conceived  the  activity  of  the  reason  of  man  to  be  organizing  in 
nature,  through  w^hich  the  good  is  produced,  or  as  symbolizing,  by  w^hich 
the  good  which  is  already  attained  is  represented.  And  in  both 
these  main  directions,  as  productive  and  as  representative,  the  active 
reason  is  also  to  be  regarded  in  its  individual  and  its  universal  relation. 
In  his  Christian  ethics  (which  Schleiermacher  derived  from  the  Christian 
consciousness),  the  reason  in  its  action  was  regarded  as  either  purifying, 
or  extending,  or  representing  the  good.  A  simpler  classification  of  duties 
from  the  nature  of  the  action  of  the  will  involved  in  them  might  be 
obtained  by  viewing  it  either  as  productive  or  regulative  action.  The 
productive  duties  would  be  those  by  which  new  moral  conditions  and 
further  good  are  brought  about ;  the  regulative  duties  would  be  those  by 
which  the  facts  and  forces  of  life  are  assembled,  adapted  to  each  other, 
and  brought  into  working  unity  and  order. 


THE   CHRISTIAN    CONSCIENCE  321 

The  objection,  however,  to  this  method  of  classification  is 
that  it  is  altogether  subjective,  and  it  offers  no  simple  and 
broad  lines  of  ethical  demarcation.  These  several  qual- 
ities of  active  intelligence,  these  characteristic  modes  of 
the  action  of  the  will,  shade  into  each  other  ;  and  indeed 
one  and  the  same  action  may  be  both  productive  and 
representative,  both  a  manifestation  of  the  good  already 
attained  and  a  means  to  further  moral  advancement.  Yet 
our  acts  and  habits  may  bear  predominantly  one  of  these 
characteristics,  and  may  profitably  be  studied  and  criticised 
from  the  points  of  view  which  Schleiermacher  chose  as  the 
determinative  points  of  his  ethical  outlines  of  conduct  and 
character. 

2.  Another  method  of  classification  of  duties  is  derived 
from  the  relation  of  the  action  of  the  will  to  the  object  of 
its  action. 

Thus  all  moral  activity  is  conceived  of  by  Wuttke  as  a  relation  between 
the  subject  and  the  object  of  the  action.  It  will  be  either  a  sparing  the 
object  by  the  subject,  or  an  appropriating  the  object  by  the  subject,  or  a 
forming  the  object  by  the  subject ;  hence  the  fundamental  forms  of  duty 
are  these  :  to  spare,  to  appropriate,  to  form.  This  is  an  interesting  point 
of  view  from  which  to  survey  the  field  of  human  obligations.  The  duty 
of  moral  sparing,  Wuttke  urges,  has  been  too  much  ignored  in  ethics, 
and  should  find  some  distinct  mention  and  place  in  any  scheme  of  duties. 
This  is,  however,  an  obligation  which  in  other  classifications  may  be 
treated  among  the  limitations  to  be  observed  in  each  specific  duty. 
Moreover,  as  this  classification  starts  from  the  subject  and  regards  the 
object  as  the  end  of  the  moral  activity  (Wuttke,  Ethics,  vol.  ii.  p.  180),  it 
leaves  no  fitting  place  for  those  passive  duties  of  the  subject  which  may 
consist  in  letting  the  object  react  upon  the  subject,  and  thus  allowing  the 
subject  to  be  formed  in  the  mould  of  the  object.  These  passive  duties 
may  be  regarded  under  the  obligation  of  the  moral  appropriation  of  the 
object  by  the  subject ;  yet  this  leaves  too  much  in  the  background  the 
moral  obligation  of  receiving  the  true  life  —  of  letting  God's  love  fill  and 
replenish  the  fountains  of  our  life. 

The  same  fundamental  objection  lies  against  this  prin- 
ciple of  classification  that  it  is  too  subjective,  and  that  our 
duties  are  not  so  easily  to  be  kept  apart  and  discriminated 
in  any  merely  subjective  method  of  arrangement.  What 
may  be  logically  distinguishable  cannot  ahvays  be  so 
distinctly  separated  in  real  life.     All  the  kinds  of  moral 


322  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

activity  which  have  been  logically  divided  may  co-exist  in 
the  same  moral  act  and  be  necessary  to  its  completion. 

3.  An  opposite  principle  of  classification  of  duties  by 
reference  to  the  different  objects  towards  which  the  moral 
activity  is  directed  has  been  more  generally  followed  by 
ethical  writers.  Duty,  it  is  said,  implies  action.  It 
denotes  the  obligation  of  the  will  in  action.  Duties,  there- 
fore, may  be  conveniently  arranged  in  relation  to  the  main 
objects  of  human  activity.  Wide  and  varied  as  is  the 
field  of  human  action,  we  may  determine  a  few  simple  and 
cardinal  points  from  which  to  survey  it.  The  individual 
is  himself  an  object  of  all  his  action.  His  activities  also 
touch  others  like  himself.  And  around  him  also,  subject 
to  his  action,  and  reacting  upon  him,  is  nature,  and  above 
him,  in  the  spiritual  realm  of  his  life,  is  his  God.  The 
objects  of  his  activity  are  then  at  most  fourfold,  —  himself, 
society,  nature,  God.  Or  these  cardinal  directions  of 
human  activity  may  be  reduced  to  three :  (1)  Duties 
towards  the  subject  as  his  own  object ;  (2)  Duties  towards 
his  social  environment;  (3)  Duties  towards  God.  In  this 
threefold  classification  man's  relations  toward  nature  are 
not  regarded  as  direct  objects  of  moral  obligation,  but 
whatever  obligations  may  be  recognized  in  these  relations 
fall  either  under  the  idea  of  duties  towards  self,  or  of 
duties  towards  God.  They  may  be  contemplated  in  either 
or  both  of  these  lights.  Kind  treatment  of  animals,  for 
instance,  is  due  to  one's  own  character  and  habit  as  a  kind 
man.  Cruelty  towards  the  animal  creation  below  man  is 
to  be  condemned  because  of  its  inevitable  immoral  reac- 
tions on  the  man  himself  who  is  indifferent  to  the  suffer- 
ings of  animals.  But,  it  may  be  urged,  are  not  animal 
forms  ends  in  themselves,  and  therefore  do  they  not  have 
some  rights  which  superior  beings  are  bound  to  respect? 
Is  self-restraint  in  the  treatment  of  the  lower  animal 
kingdom  to  be  practised  solely  on  account  of  its  moral 
value  in  the  life  of  man  ?  Does  not  nature  itself,  and  the 
whole  animal  creation,  stand  in  some  objective  relation  to 
the  spirit  of  man,  which  ought  to  be  recognized  and 
observed  by  him  ?     We  may  admit  that  it  does  ;  it  is  con- 


THE   CHEISTIAN   CONSCIENCE  323 

gruous  with  our  moral  feeling  to  regard  the  whole  realm 
of  nature  and  life  as  having  some  relative  independence 
and  rights  before  our  will,  which  set  limits  to  the  moral 
exercise  of  force  bj  man  over  the  natural  creation.  Thus 
the  sportsman  owns  a  certain  unwritten  law  of  sport, 
which  limits  to  his  uses  the  amount  of  game  that  he  may 
shoot,  or  fish  that  he  may  kill.  Yet  when  we  seek  to 
discover  the  ground  of  our  moral  feeling  towards  nature, 
and  the  reason  for  our  moral  regard  for  animals  beyond 
any  reactions  of  our  treatment  of  them  upon  ourselves, 
we  fail  to  find  such  ground  of  obligation  immediately  in 
nature  itself,  or  in  any  moral  claim  of  animate  being  in 
itself  considered.  For  nature  is  throughout  means  for  the 
higher  self-conscious  life.  It  is  not  properly  in  itself  a 
moral  end.  No  unintelligent  and  unmoral  existence  can 
be  regarded  as  having  its  end  of  being  in  itself.  But  if 
we  look  more  deeply  into  the  innermost  secret  of  nature, 
we  may  gain  from  a  profound  spiritual  philosophy  of  it  a 
rational  ground  for  the  immunity  of  the  outward  world 
from  our  lawless  violence,  and  a  moral  obligation  of 
humanity  towards  the  animal  kingdom.  For  behind  nature 
is  God;  beneath  all  life  is  the  living  One.  Nature  through- 
out is  manifestation  of  Spirit ;  it  is  the  garment  of  the 
Divine.  Nature  is  a  sacred  Scripture  from  God.  It  is 
fashioned,  organized,  and  preserved  as  the  word  of  the 
divine  Thought  and  the  revelation  of  an  infinite  Wisdom. 
It  should  command,  therefore,  our  reverence.  It  is  not  in 
any  part  of  it  to  be  regarded  as  something  common  and 
unclean.  To  the  eye  of  a  spiritual  faith  nature  is  all  holy 
ground,  and  as  we  walk  upon  it  w^e  are  to  take  off  our 
shoes  and  worship  God.  Its  immediate  relation  to  God 
as  means  of  the  divine  objectifying  of  his  eternal  thought 
in  visible  forms,  gives  even  to  inanimate  nature  a  worth 
beyond  any  value  which  it  may  acquire  under  the  shaping 
of  our  hands  or  for  our  utilities.  Nature,  when  seen  to 
be  full  every  evening  with  the  Spirit,  and  fresh  every 
morning  with  a  divine  greeting  of  light  and  life  to  the 
world,  becomes  to  us  a  sacred  revelation  to  be  received  by 
us  reverentially  and  wdth  grateful  response  of  our  spirit 


324  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

to  the  One  Spirit  whose  word  and  work  it  is.  Still  more 
must  nature  appear  to  us  as  something  reverentially  to  be 
regarded  in  its  higher  forms  of  organized  life  and  nearest 
approaches  to  consciousness.  Hence  our  duty  of  humanity 
towards  the  animal  kingdom  becomes  part  of  our  general 
duty  of  reverence  towards  the  living  God.  The  divisions 
of  duty  which  are  thus  obtained  in  this  scheme  of  classifi- 
cation are  intelligible  and  simple ;  and  they  have  often 
been  adopted  by  writers  in  the  field  of  practical  morals  as 
the  most  convenient  form  of  ethical  classification. ^  It  does 
not  appear  to  us,  however,  to  be  a  sufficient  principle  of 
classification,  as  will  be  seen  from  what  follows. 

4.  In  determining  what  method  of  discrimination  among 
our  duties  it  is  best  to  follow,  we  should  observe  that  every 
duty  involves  these  two  things,  —  a  subjective  sense  of 
obligation,  and  a  relation  of  the  moral  agent  to  some  out- 
ward object  as  the  end  of  his  action.  Our  classification  of 
the  duties  accordingly,  should  have  respect  both  to  the 
common  principle  of  obligation  and  the  different  objects 
on  which  as  moral  ends  the  obligation  may  rest ;  in  other 
words,  the  subjective  obligation  is  to  be  differentiated  in 
its  relation  to  the  several  objective  ends  of  moral  activity. 

The  one  common  obligation  of  which  we  are  conscious,  is  to  realize 
the  highest  good.  Our  endeavor  to  do  this  becomes  our  virtue,  which,  as 
Aristotle  rightly  perceived,  is  inclusive  of  happiness.  The  general  obli- 
gation of  our  life  is  to  attain  virtue,  or  to  make  the  ideal  real.  Conse- 
quently, the  supreme  duty  will  be  found  contained  in  the  conception  of 
the  highest  good.  But  this  one  highest  good  is  to  be  realized  in  many 
concrete  goods.  The  ideal  becomes  real  through  the  many  virtues.  The 
doctrine  of  the  goods,  therefore,  in  and  through  which  the  highest  good 
is  realizable,  will  determine  our  doctrine  of  duties.  We  may  classify 
these  in  view  of  the  specific  concrete  goods,  and  in  relation  to  the  particu- 
lar virtues  through  which  these  goods  are  to  be  realized.  Each  virtue  has 
its  corresponding  duty,  for  we  are  under  obligation  in  general  to  make 
all  the  possible  goods  of  life  actual,  to  make  the  ideal  real  in  every  jDar- 
ticular  of  it. 

The  obligation  to  seek  the  supreme  good  assumes,  accordingly,  more 
definite  forms  in  reference  to   the  possible  objects  of  moral  activity  in 

1  Rothe  objects  to  this  mode  of  classification,  that  it  does  not  jiroceed  from 
an  ethical  principle,  but  defines  duties  l)y  reference  to  things  which  lie  outside 
ethics.  He  would  find  the  general  forms  for  the  duties  in  the  moral  ends  of 
actions.—  Theol.  Ethik,  §  857  £f. 


THE   CHRISTIAN   CONSCIENCE  325 

the  spheres  of  moral  life.  These  are  in  general  two,  —  the  sphere  of  the 
individual  life  —  one's  self  as  an  object  of  moral  activity,  and  the  uni- 
versal life  in  which  the  individual  shares  and  is  to  be  made  perfect  —  the 
world  as  an  object  of  moral  action.  Self  and  its  environment  constitute 
the  two  general  objects  of  moral  action.  This  environment  of  self  is  to 
be  still  further  distinguished.  It  is  material  environment  —  body,  matter, 
nature  ;  it  is  also  human  environment  —  social  life  ;  moreover,  it  is  spirit- 
ual environment  —  God  —  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  his  righteousness. 
But  the  first  division  (nature),  as  already  seen,  lies  between  the  other 
two  —  the  human  and  the  divine  ;  it  is  to  be  conceived  as  in  part  belonging 
to  the  one  and  in  part  to  the  other,  as  the  conscious  self  appropriates  it, 
and  makes  it  a  means  of  its  own  life,  or  as  it  is  seen  to  be  the  work  and 
manifestation  of  the  spiritual,  of  the  living  God  around  the  individual 
self. 

This  metliocl  of  classification  proceeds  from  an  ethical 
idea,  as  Rothe  insisted  that  it  should  do,  —  the  idea  of 
moral  ends ;  and  it  proceeds  to  determine  these  ends  con- 
cretely in  relation  to  the  chief  objects  of  moral  action. 
This  method  will  yield  a  simple  and  workable  scheme  of 
moral  classification.  We  shall  divide  duties  accordingly 
into  (1)  duties  in  relation  to  self  as  a  moral  end  ;  (2)  duties 
in  relation  to  others  as  moral  ends  (social  duties)  ;  (3) 
duties  in  relation  to  God  as  willing  the  supreme  end  of 
being.^ 

In  this  method  of  classification  by  reference  to  the  objec- 
tive ends  of  moral  action,  we  escape  the  difficulty  of  a  merely 
subjective  method  to  which  experience  may  show  little 
correspondence ;  but  all  divisions  in  practical  ethics,  it 
should  be  remembered,  must  have   about  them  a  certain 

1  Harms  reduces  all  duties  to  social  duties,  inasmuch  as  duty  relates  to 
action,  and  action  implies  the  relation  of  one  person  to  another  (Ethik,  s.  147). 
But  suppose  only  one  finite  being  in  existence,  —  would  he  have  no  duties? 
Rothe  distinguished  between  duty  and  obligation,  the  latter  implying  another 
person  to  whom  it  is  owed.  If,  however,  we  consider  self  as  an  object  of  our 
action,  it  would  thereby  become  an  object  of  moral  obligation.  Hence  the  com- 
mon speech  concerning  duties  to  one's  self  is  justifialde.  Harms  places  duty 
as  an  intermediate  l)etween  virtues  and  goods.  He  says:  "Duty  presup- 
poses all  virtues,  and  is  directed  towards  all  goods.  Hence  the  general  formula 
for  duty  is :  Act  constantly  so,  that  all  virtues  may  be  active  in  you  in  relation  to 
all  goods  "  (Ibid.  s.  151).  This  is  true  so  far  as  it  defines  duties  by  a  virtu- 
ous striving  after  moral  goods. 

Rothe  argues  against  a  threefold  division,  admitting  only  duties  to  self 
and  others  in  relation  to  the  supreme  moral  end,  and  regarding  all  duties  as 
religious  (Theol.  Eth.§  857.  Anm.).  Our  reasons  for  retaining  the  ordinary 
threefold  division  will  be  given  in  the  chapter  concerning  duties  to  God. 


326  CHKISTIAX   ETHICS 

logical  abstractness,  for  in  real  life  no  virtue  can  exist  in 
solitary  perfection,  and  each  duty  bears  within  itself  echoes 
of  other  duties.  Moral  obligations  are  woven  intricately 
together,  and  after  diverse  patterns,  in  the  web  of  life.  It 
jnay  be  said  with  truth  that  all  the  virtues  lie  latent  in  any 
one  virtue,  and  that  all  duties  are  im23licit  in  the  fulfilment 
of  any  single  obligation  perfectly.  In  this  sense,  and 
according  to  a  more  profound  ethical  conception  than  the 
Jewish  thought  of  the  law,  the  perfect  man  is  he  wlio  keeps 
all  the  commandments ;  and  he  who  breaks  the  least  com- 
mandment breaks  the  whole  law. 


CHAPTER   II 

DUTIES    TOWARDS   SELF   AS    A   MORAL   END 

Duties  towards  self  are  plainly  recognized  in  the  ethics 
of  the  New  Testament.  The  second  commandment  implies 
that  the  obligation  of  a  man  to  himself  at  least  stands  on 
the  same  level  with,  and  is  equal  to,  his  obligation  towards 
his  neighbor.  The  commandment  of  altruism  —  Thou  shalt 
love  thy  neighbor  —  rests  on  the  assumption  of  a  love  to 
one's  self.  Some  self-love  is  taken  for  granted  in  the 
commandment  as  the  measure  of  love  to  one's  neighbor. 
And  numerous  precepts  in  the  epistles  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment assume  that  self  is  a  moral  end  to  be  regarded.  One 
is  exhorted  to  prove  himself  ;  to  examine  himself ;  to  "  have 
his  glorying  in  regard  of  himself  alone  " ;  to  keep  him- 
self from  evil ;  to  know  that  he  is  "  a  temple  of  God  "  in 
which  the  Spirit  dwells.  And  quite  after  the  form  of  the 
second  commandment  of  Jesus,  the  apostle  Paul,  when  he 
wished  to  settle  on  Christian  principles  some  social  con- 
fusions among  recent  converts  from  Grecian  looseness  of 
morals,  exhorted  husbands  to  love  their  wives  as  their  own 
bodies,  "He  that  loveth  his  own  w^ife  loveth  himself  ";i 
thereby  assuming,  as  does  the  second  commandment,  that 
there  is  a  self-love  which  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  self- 
ishness, but  which  is  natural  and  right;  there  is  a  duty 
towards  self  to  be  taken  for  granted.  The  truth  of  this 
moral  assumption  of  the  second  commandment,  and  of  such 
precepts  in  the  epistles,  becomes  evident  when  we  reflect 
that  each  soul  is  an  end  to  itself  in  the  sight  of  God,  for  to 
each  it  has  been  given  in  some  measure  to  have  life  in  itself. 
This  bestowal  of  self-contained  life,  like  the  life  of  God  in 
Himself,  is  not  indeed  an  absolute  gift  to  us  ;  —  we  live  in 
God  and  in  absolute  dependence  on  Him  ;  —  but  so  far  as 

1  Eph.  V.  28. 

327 


828  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

we  have  received  power  to  live  within  our  finite  selves, 
and  may  maintain  for  ourselves  our  inward  self-conscious- 
ness, we  are  become  spiritual  ends  of  the  creation,  and  are 
no  more  mere  means  for  the  use  of  others  or  even  for  any 
arbitrary  will  of  God,  nor  for  our  own  selfish  pleasure.  It 
would  be  immoral  for  us  not  to  regard  ourselves  as  moral 
ends  of  creation.  Not  to  respect  and  to  cherish  this  self- 
life  which  has  been  deleo^ated  to  the  soul  from  its  divine 
source,  and  which  in  its  finite  measure  is  like  the  infinite 
self-being  of  God,  would  be  disloyalty,  unfaithfulness, 
deadly  sin.  A  human  personality  is  a  sacred  trust  of 
being.  Ever}^  man  holds  himself  in  trust  from  his  Creator. 
Although  animals  have  like  us  the  instinct  of  self-preser- 
vation, tliey  cannot  share  with  us  this  godlike  power  of 
holding  self  in  trust  for  noble  uses.  But  the  soul  can  say 
to  itself:  "I  have  been  raised  out  of  unconscious  nature; 
and  am  a  personal  being,  knowing  myself  and  moving  off 
on  lines  of  my  own  choice  and  aims.  I  will  keep  that 
which  has  been  committed  to  my  charge ;  I  am  responsible 
to  myself  for  myself."  A  human  soul  is  itself  an  ever 
present  and  conscious  supernaturalness  in  the  midst  of 
nature,  and  it  would  surrender  its  own  glory  should  it  cease 
to  regard  itself  as  of  more  value  than  the  birds  of  the  air 
or  the  lilies  of  the  field.  This  duty  of  self-regard,  which 
follows  immediately  from  any  spiritual  conception  of  the 
worth  of  human  nature,  may  also  be  ethically  deduced,  as 
we  have  already  observed  (p.  226),  from  the  nature  of  an 
adequate  idea  of  what  love  is.  For  love  is  self-affirmation 
as  well  as  self-impartation  ;  it  must  first  be  self-affirmation 
in  order  that  it  may  become  self-imparting  love.  We  can- 
not give  worthily  what  we  have  not  esteemed  to  be  worthy. 
A  friend  who  does  not  keep  himself  in  the  pure  worth  of 
his  own  soul  has  nothing  worth  giving  to  another.  True 
self-love  (not  love  of  the  happiness  of  self,  but  of  the 
worth  of  the  self)  is  therefore  antecedent  condition  of  all 
genuine  and  worthy  love  of  others.^ 

1  "  A  love  without  any  self-assertion  were  an  indefinite  melting  into  the 
great  All,  a  self-dissolution,"  etc.  —  Marteusen,  Christian  Ethics  {^Special),  vol. 
i.  p.  159. 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    SELF   AS   A   MORAX   END  329 

It  is  not  difficult  to  distinguish  this  proper  self-regard 
from  selfishness,  Avhich  is  its  counterfeit  and  its  desrada- 
tion.  For  selfishness  is  not  true  love  of  self,  but  a  false 
love  of  self.  It  is  regard  for  self  in  the  wrong  place, 
and  at  the  wrong  time.  It  is  taking  self  out  of  its  true 
relations,  and  putting  it  into  a  wrong  position  toward  all 
around  it.  Selfishness  is  a  wilful  exaltation  of  self,  and 
a  claim  to  an  independence  of  one's  own  life  from  other 
life,  which  violates  the  larger  moral  order  of  things.  The 
request  of  the  prodigal,  "  Father,  give  me  the  portion  of 
thy  substance  that  falleth  to  me,"  and  his  departure  to  a 
far  country,  and  the  misery  consequent  upon  his  separation 
of  himself  from  the  natural  relationships  of  his  home, 
afford  a  complete  history  of  selfishness  in  its  isolation  and 
false  independence,  in  its  utter  degradation  of  the  true 
self  and  loss  of  the  good  which  it  might  have  kept  in  the 
father's  house.  When  the  prodigal's  false  life  drew  near 
its  wretched  end,  and  he  was  about  to  return  to  seek  again 
his  true  life,  it  is  said  with  profound  ethical  truth,  "He 
came  to  himself."  The  beginning  of  virtuous  life  is  a 
coming  to  one's  self.  And  it  is  never  selfish  to  be  one's 
self,  and  to  remain  true  to  self. 

It  is  the  first  law  of  nature  that  the  order  of  the  whole 
consists  in  the  fidelity  of  each  created  thing  to  itself.  It 
would  not  be  selfish  for  an  atom  to  persist  against  all 
impacts  of  other  atoms  in  being  an  atom  still ;  the  earth 
is  not  self-seeking  in  continuing  true  to  its  own  orbit ;  the 
sun  is  not  selfish  in  shining  with  irrepressible  radiance  as 
the  sun  ;  man  is  not  selfish  in  resolving  to  be  manly ; 
angels  are  not  selfish  in  holding  above  all  touch  of  earth- 
liness  their  angelic  beauty ;  seraphs  are  not  selfish  in  gaz- 
ing into  the  immediate  glory  of  their  God ;  God  himself 
is  not  selfish  in  being  God  over  all  blessed  forever.  But 
it  would  be  selfish  for  any  created  thing  to  choose,  if  it 
could,  to  cease  to  be  itself ;  should  an  atom  seek  to  expand 
itself  to  a  world,  or  a  world  seek  to  shine  as  a  star,  or  a 
sun  grow  weary  of  shining  for  all  its  attendant  planets,  — 
such  departure  from  nature's  bounds  and  ends  would  be 
the  analogy  of  selfishness  in  the  moral  order.     It  would 


330  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

be  selfishness  inconceivable  in  God,  should  He  grow  weary 
of  receiving  the  worship  of  the  universe  as  the  source  and 
fountain  of  all  life ;  it  is  selfishness  in  man  not  to  be  man, 
and  to  fulfil  all  the  possibilities,  as  well  as  to  keep  within 
the  divine  limitations,  of  his  human  nature. 

So  far  the  natural  conscience  may  discriminate  between 
that  true  self-love  which  is  the  necessary  ground  for  all 
moral  benevolence,  and  that  perverted  self-love  which 
would  absorb  in  self-seeking  the  whole  moral  order.  In 
the  moral  consciousness  of  the  Christian  man  further  dif- 
ferences between  true  self-love  and  its  counterfeits  have 
become  manifest.  For  the  self  which  the  Christian  man 
regards  as  worthy  of  his  respect  is  the  new  selfhood  which 
is  born  of  the  Spirit  within  him.  It  is  not  his  own  poor 
idea  of  himself  which  attracts  him,  but  God's  idea  of  him 
as  he  apprehends  more  and  more  that  for  which  also  he  is 
apprehended  in  Christ  Jesus.^  It  is  the  redeemed  Chris- 
tian selfhood  that  he  cherishes,  and  which  he  will  suffer 
no  power  of  evil  to  take  from  him.  It  is  the  inward  man 
created  anew  in  the  image  of  God  unto  good  works,  whom 
he  regards  with  honor,  and  for  whose  sake  he  keeps  him- 
self from  sin.  He  will  love  so  well  this  new  Christian 
§elf,  which  is  his  true,  coming  self,  that  for  its  sake  he  will 
be  willing  to  count  all  things  but  loss.  This  perception 
9.nd  respect  for  the  forming  Christian  self,  will  preclude 
pride  and  self-glorying.  It  is  a  regard  for  self  born  in 
humility.  It  is  a  love  for  the  best  self  which  springs  from 
crucifixion  of  the  old  and  sinful  self.  It  is  a  self-respect 
which  has  been  regained  from  a  profound  conviction  of 
sin,  and  which  exists  in  grateful  dependence  on  the  grace 
of  God.  Its  voice  will  be  like  the  apostle's  triumph  in  his 
endeavor  to  find  the  righteousness  of  God  :  "For  I  through 
the  law  died  unto  the  law,  that  I  might  live  unto  God. 
I  have  been  crucified  with  Christ ;  yet  I  live ;  and  yet  no 
longer  I,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me  :  and  that  life  which  I 
now  live  in  the  flesh  I  live  in  faith,  the  faith  which  is  in  the 
Son  of  God,  who  loved  me,  and  gave  himself  up  for  me."  ^ 

1  Phil.  iii.  12.  2  Gal.  ii.  19.  20. 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    SELF   AS    A   MORAL   END  331 

The  Christian  man  in  this  righteousness  of  faith  can  be  the 
magnanimous  man  up  to  the  full  truth  of  Aristotle's  idea 
of  magnanimity ;  yet  he  Avill  preserve  his  self-respect  and 
nobleness  in  a  humility  which  Aristotle  could  not  con- 
ceive, but  without  which  his  great-minded  man  remains  a 
pitiable  example  of  pride  and  self-glorying.  They  are  for- 
ever teachable  and  humble  as  little  children,  yet  strong 
and  glorious  as  the  sons  of  God,  who  can  say,  "  And  he 
made  us  to  be  a  kingdom,  to  be  priests  unto  his  God  and 
Father;  to  him  be  the  glory  and  the  dominion  for  ever 
and  ever."  ^ 

We  turn  next,  accordingly,  to  the  chief  duties  wliich 
are  contained  in  a  true  self-regard. 

1.    The  Duty  of  Self-Preservation. 

The  instinct  of  self-preservation  is  profoundly  signifi- 
cant of  the  nature  of  life  as  something  which  was  born  to 
continue  unbroken  by  any  stroke  of  death  from  without. 
We  feel  it  to  be  the  intent  of  life  to  persist  and  not  to 
give  place  to  another.  Life,  not  death,  if  we  may  judge 
by  the  primal  instincts  of  our  being,  is  Lord ;  life  is  first, 
and  last,  and  always ;  death  is  an  intermediate  and  alien 
power.  This  significance  of  the  tendency  of  life  to  pre- 
serve itself  without  break  of  continuity,  belongs  to  our 
philosophical  stud}^  of  nature ;  w^e  are  concerned  with  it 
here  only  as  it  is  the  natural  ground  of  a  moral  obligation 
which  springs  from  it  into  the  ethical  consciousness.  So 
far,  indeed,  as  self-preservation  remains  only  a  deep  natural 
instinct,  it  cannot  be  spoken  of  as  a  dut}^ ;  but  so  far  as 
it  gives  rise  to  the  distinct  idea  of  keeping  self  in  its 
integrity  unharmed,  and  to  a  choice  of  means  for  that  end, 
it  falls  within  the  sphere  of  moral  obligation. 

Whatever  belongs  to  the  essential  idea  of  a  man  is  to  be 
kept  sacred,  and  all  means  possible  for  the  maintenance  of 
the  whole  of  one's  nature  are  to  be  chosen  under  a  sense  of 
obligation  to  one's  self.  This  duty  is  not  met  by  the  effort 
to  preserve  a  part  only  of  one's  human  nature :  nor  is  the 
first  obligation  of  self-preservation  discharged  by  a  manner 
of  life  which  willingly  sacrifices  any  element  of  man's  com- 

1  Rev.  i.  6. 


332  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

plex  but  integral  selfhood  to  some  otlier  faculty  or  function 
of  his  personal  nature.  The  duty  of  self-preservation  re- 
lates both  to  body  and  soul,  and  to  the  preservation  of  each 
in  its  due  relation  and  ministry  to  the  other.  The  whole 
man,  as  a  living  unity  of  powers,  is  to  be  protected  from 
evil  and  defended  against  loss  or  corruption. 

(1)  This  duty  of  self-preservation  embraces  therefore  the 
maintenance  of  all  bodily  and  spiritual  functions,  as  well 
as  their  mutual  harmony  and  helpfulness.  Man's  provi- 
dence over  himself  should  take  thought  of  all  things  per- 
taining to  his  being,  as  God's  providence  holds  the  whole 
man,  body,  soul,  and  spirit,  in  its  hand. 

The  full  conception  of  this  duty  will  be  seen  to  contain 
the  answer  to  any  self-limiting  or  self-destructive  asceticism. 
Atrophy  of  any  power,  when  voluntarily  suffered,  is  a  fail- 
ure of  proper  self-regard.  Every  muscle  in  the  body  has  its 
moral  right  to  be  used,  each  nerve  its  ethical  claim  for  its 
full  vitality  in  the  harmony  of  the  whole  body,  which  should 
be  kept  in  its  integrity.  An  ascetic  mutilation  or  careless 
neglect  even  of  any  natural  powers  and  functions  of  body, 
mind,  or  heart,  is  a  mistaken  offence  against  the  first  com- 
mandment of  self-preservation.  Nor  does  such  neglect  and 
atrophy  of  any  part  of  human  nature  find  justification  in 
the  ethics  of  the  New  Testament.  For  Avhen  did  our  Lord 
ever  teach  that  self-denial  is  good  for  its  own  sake,  that 
sacrifice  is  prized  by  God  for  its  own  merit !  Self-denial, 
he  always  said  to  his  disciples,  was  to  be  for  the  gospel's 
sake.  The  thought  of  another's  good  is  the  condition  in 
which  sacrifice  becomes  noble.  To  take  up  the  cross  simply 
for  the  sake  of  cross-bearing,  would  not  be  an  imitation  of 
the  Lord  who  gave  his  life  for  the  world.  In  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  Jesus  taught,  it  is  true,  a  comparative  morality  of 
self-mortification.  He  said,  "  And  if  thy  right  eye  causeth 
thee  to  stumble,  pluck  it  out,  and  cast  it  from  thee."  He 
taught  that  such  mutilation  and  loss  Avas  better  than  to  be 
cast  with  the  whole  body  into  hell ;  but  Jesus  did  not  say 
that  this  is  best.  It  may  be  the  better  thing  for  a  man,  but 
not  the  best  thing.  Jesus  did  not  make  the  ascetic  mistake 
of  imagining  that  a  man  who  has  been  obliged  to  pluck  out 


DUTIES   TOWARDS    SELF   AS    A   MOEAL   END  333 

his  eye,  or  to  cut  off  his  right  hand  in  order  that  his  soul 
may  be  saved  at  all,  is  better  than  the  man  who  with  two 
good  hands  and  two  pure  eyes  enters  into  eternal  life.  It 
is  better  to  be  saved  than  miserably  to  perish.  It  is  best  to 
be  saved  abundantly.  "  For  thus  shall  be  richly  supplied 
unto  you  the  entrance  into  the  eternal  kingdom  of  our  Lord 
and  Saviour  Jesus  Clunst."  ^ 

Jesus  had  no  need  to  pluck  out  his  own  eye  in  which 
heaven  dwelt,  nor  to  cut  off  his  own  arm  which  was  out- 
stretched to-save  others.  The  Church  of  the  Son  of  man 
is  not  most  happily  conceived  as  a  hospital  for  one-eyed 
and  one-armed  saints.  "  I  came,"  said  our  Lord,  "  that 
they  may  have  life,  and  may  have  it  abundantly."  ^ 

A  large  conception  of  the  duty  of  self-preservation  will 
prevent  also  our  falling  into  narrow  and  one-sided  ideas  of 
self-culture.  The  duty  of  self-preservation  is  a  duty  of 
symmetry.  It  is  not  met  if  one  so  lives  as  to  sacrifice  the 
body  to  the  brain,  or  to  sacrifice  the  mind  to  the  heart,  or 
to  make  any  one  power  of  human  nature  mere  means  to 
other  faculties,  and  not  in  itself  a  part  of  the  whole  end  of 
self-development.  For  even  those  powers  which  are  sub- 
servient to  our  higher  faculties  belong,  as  in  themselves 
good,  to  the  perfection  of  human  nature.  The  body  is  not 
only  means  to  the  soul,  but  there  is  a  sense  in  which  the 
soul  is  also  means  to  the  body,  which  without  it  could  not 
reach  in  any  animal  form  such  worth  and  grace.  The 
bodily  members  may  be  deemed  to  be  ends  of  the  creation 
so  far  as  they  sum  up  its  possibilities  in  the  direction  of 
their  perfection, — the  perfect  eye,  or  the  true  touch,  or 
the  healthful  brain  in  its  unity  with  the  spirit,  may  itself 
be  considered  as  an  end  of  the  good  purpose  of  the  Creator 
so  far  as  matter  can  be  furnished  for  mind.  Not  absolutely 
indeed  apart  from  their  spiritual  possession  and  use  can 
the  organs  of  the  body  be  so  regarded  as  moral  ends ;  but 
in  their  perfection  after  their  kind,  and  in  their  fitness  for 
the  soul,  they  are  attainments  of  a  good  which  is  an  end  of 
God's  creative  wa3^s,  —  even  the  good  of  the  union  of  mind 
with  matter  for  the  fulness  and  joy  of  created  life.     In  this 

1  2  Pet.  i.  11.  2  John  x.  10. 


334  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

aspect,  as  relative  ends,  as  consummation  of  matter  for 
spirit,  our  physical  powers  have  worth  and  are  to  be  re- 
spected in  the  discharge  of  our  duty  of  self-preservation. 

The  ethics  of  the  New  Testament  recognizes  this  relative 
worth  of  the  lower  powers  and  functions  of  man's  nature, 
for  it  insists  that  these  are  to  be  held  above  corruption  by 
the  Christian  man :  "  Or  know  ye  not  that  your  body  is  a 
temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost  which  is  in  you,  which  ye  have 
from  God."  i 

(2)  The  duty  of  self-preservation  comprises* the  obliga- 
tion of  self-defence  against  any  physical  violence  or  danger, 
and  of  self-protection  in  the  use  of  the  means  for  the  sus- 
tentation  of  life.  The  former  duty  is.  not  now  to  be  dis- 
charged often  by  the  individual  exercise  of  force,  as  in 
ruder  times ;  yet  some  power,  and  consciousness  of  power 
to  protect  one's  self  from  injury,  is  a  part  still  of  manly 
virtue.  The  ability,  likewise,  to  gain  and  to  keep  the  means 
for  the  sustentation  of  life,  is  now  largely  bound  up  with 
the  industrial  capability  of  the  community  of  which  one  is 
a  member ;  but  it  is  an  old  truism  in  morals,  which  should 
not  be  merged  in  any  obligation  of  society  to  its  members, 
that  every  man  owes  to  himself  his  own  livelihood,  and  that 
he  is  under  obligation  to  win  it  from  his  economic  environ- 
ment. The  means  of  support  are  not  absolutely  a  duty 
which  society  owes  to  a  man,  an  obligation  of  all  to  each ; 
but  this  is  man's  first  duty  to  himself.  If  the  conditions  of 
society  take  from  him  his  ability  to  gain  the  means  of  self- 
support,  that  may  be  a  distinct  wrong  which  may  need  to 
be  remedied ;  but  the  ability  to  work  for  a  living  imposes 
the  duty  of  work,  and  the  obligation  of  self-preservation  is 
not  to  be  shifted  from  the  individual  to  society.  It  is  truer 
to  say  every  man  owes  himself  a  living  than  to  say  that  so- 
ciety owes  him  a  living. 

(3)  The  duty  of  self-preservation  embraces  the  obliga- 
tions of  all  those  virtues  which  are  conducive  to  healthful 
and  vigorous  life,  —  such  as  chastity,  temperance,  moder- 
ation, self-control,  and  a  general  reasonableness  in  the 
methods  and  fashions  of  business  and  pleasure.      There 

1  1  Cor.  vi.  19. 


DUTIES   TOWARDS   SELF  AS  A   MOEAL   END  335 

are  other  and  still  higher  reasons  for  the  practice  of  such 
virtues ;  some  of  them  are  obligations  due  to  others  still 
more  than  to  one's  self ;  but,  on  the  lower  grounds  of  self- 
preservation,  these  common  virtues  of  temperance  in  all 
things,  and  abstinence  from  every  lust  which  destroys  the 
life  of  body  or  soul,  are  among  the  primary  obligations  of 
a  wholesome  conscience.  The  spiritual  conscience  em- 
phasizes and  intensifies  them ;  but  these  are  common  duties 
of  nature  which  Epicurus  as  well  as  Aristotle,  and  all 
schools  of  moralists,  have  been  resolute  to  teach. 

(4)  The  obligation  to  keep  ourselves  in  the  integrity 
of  our  whole  being,  will  impel  us  also  to  discriminate  in 
outward  fashions  and  customs  between  those  things  wdiich 
are  healthful  and  those  which  are  hurtful,  and  to  give  the 
utmost  possible  wholesomeness  to  our  habits  and  surround- 
ings. 

Consequently  the  exhausting  haste  to  be  rich,  the  dissi- 
pation of  energy  in  multitudinous  cares,  the  scattering  of 
one's  vitalities  among  too  many  pursuits,  the  failure  to 
cheer  up  the  spirits  by  sufficient  amusement,  or  to  keep 
the  blood  red  in  the  veins  by  the  glow  of  exercise,  the 
enervation  of  soul  as  well  as  body  from  lack  of  sunshine 
and  out-of-door  life,  —  these,  and  many  other  physical 
misdemeanors  which  may  rob  us  of  health  and  power,  are 
evils  to  be  guarded  against  with  w^atchful  common  sense ; 
and  when  they  may  be  avoided  by  care  on  our  part,  if  not 
prevented,  they  become  sins  against  ourselves  as  really, 
although  not  so  grossly,  as  any  other  bodily  intemperance. 
The  simple  and  broad  duty  of  rightful  self-regard,  of  true 
self-love,  will  lead  us  to  subject  to  ethical  scrutiny  all  our 
bodily  habits  and  our  fashions  of  life,  as  well  as  our  food 
and  raiment,  our  ways  of  working,  our  seasons  of  relaxa- 
tion, and  hours  of  sleep. 

It  is,  in  general,  a  Christian  duty  to  have  a  conscience 
void  of  offence  against  the  physical  laws  of  our  being. 
This  is  indeed  a  limited  obligation ;  it  is  conditioned  by 
the  claims  of  other  elements  of  our  nature  and  must  be 
held  subject  to  the  demands  of  man's  whole  ethical  task  in 
this  world.      The  resultant  duty  from  the   collision  with 


336  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

tliis  physical  interest  of  other  claims  and  necessities  of 
man's  calling,  may  involve  the  self-sacrifice  of  some  physi- 
cal good,  or  willingness  to  make  a  temporary  demand  upon 
one's  physical  CDei'gies  beyond  the  restorative  power  of 
nature  for  the  season  of  unusual  exertion ;  —  we  may 
deem  it  right  at  times  to  draw  on  our  physical  capital  for 
higher  ends,  as  well  as  to  exhaust  our  daily  physical  inter- 
est of  strength  and  vitality ;  or  there  may  be  placed 
before  the  spirit  of  a  man  the  duty  of  absolute  surrender 
of  his  physical  existence,  and  the  crown  of  martyrdom. 
But,  abstracted  from  these  considerations  of  other  and 
higher  interests,  this  duty  of  self-preservation, — body, 
soul,  mind,  and  heart,  —  is  to  be  deemed  a  primary  obliga- 
tion of  human  life,  its  first  faithfulness  to  itself. 

(5)  Moreover,  this  obligation  to  live  should  control  our 
whole  thought  of  death.  To  the  Christian  conscience  espe- 
cially the  thought  of  death  will  be  brought  under  the  larger 
conception  of  life  and  the  moral  law  of  life.  For  in  the 
view  of  the  Christian  man  death  is  only  an  apparent  break 
in  the  continuity  of  life,  a  momentary  interruption  of  the 
moral  task  of  living,  but  no  real  break  of  the  spiritual  con- 
tinuity of  being.  The  thought  of  death  becomes  therefore  in 
every  way  subordinate  to,  and  is  to  be  comprehended  in,  the 
thought  of  life.  Death  is  to  be  taken  into  the  plan  of  life  as 
a  moment  of  it ;  death  is  to  be  met  and  passed  through  as  w^e 
would  carry  on  to  completion  the  one  moral  purpose  of 
life.  Death,  therefore,  will  be  regarded  not  simply  as  a 
fatal  accident  which  must  at  some  time  happen  to  every 
man,  nor  will  it  be  conceived  simply  as  the  compulsory 
surrender  of  life  to  the  grasp  of  a  dread  foe  from  whose 
hand  perhaps  some  mightier  power  may  rescue  it;  but 
rather  death  will  be  conceived  as  another  step  to  be  taken, 
when  we  come  to  it,  in  the  way  of  life.  Death,  therefore, 
becomes  itself  a  part  of  duty  —  one  of  the  duties  of  life. 
Death  falls  with  all  other  actions  and  events  into  the  obliga- 
tion of  life  and  its  perfecting.  Not  only  must  we  die  ; 
but  it  is  our  duty  to  go  through  death  on  our  way  of  life, 
and  to  go  down  through  death  with  a  good  conscience. 
The  duty  of  self-preservation  is  the  obligation  of  living 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    SELF    AS   A   MORAL   END  337 

that  kind  of  life  which  we  have  reason  to  believe  will  best 
survive  the  shock  of  death,  and  awake  to  the  fullest  and 
largest  life  after  death.  The  Christian  doctrine  of  the 
resurrection  of  the  dead  guarantees  the  continuity  of  our 
life  in  all  its  constitutive  elements ;  our  embodiment  has 
therefore  some  future  as  well  as  present  significance.  It 
is  at  least  to  the  future  perfected  life  as  the  seed  is  to  the 
flower,  or  the  green  blade  to  the  full  grow^n  ear.  Care 
then  for  this  bod}^,  and  training  of  those  faculties  wdiich 
are  partly  physical  and  partly  spiritual,  —  such  as  the 
acquisition  of  skill  in  cunning  workmanship,  of  artistic 
touch,  of  ability  to  perceive  all  fair  colors  and  to  enjoy 
harmonious  sounds, — these  and  all  rational  developments 
of  the  embodied  soul  are  to  be  regarded  not  as  moral  tasks 
for  this  present  life  only,  but  as  a  preparation  of  the  whole 
personal  being  for  that  life  which  in  all  its  essential  ele- 
ments and  constitutive  factors  is  to  be  continued  beyond 
death. 

We  may  gain  a  still  higher  and  more  Christian  thought 
of  death  as  a  human  duty  as  well  as  a  divine  decree.  For 
we  may  go  down  actively  to  meet  death,  and  to  some 
degree  be  not  merely  passive  spectators,  but  willing  partici- 
pants in  the  necessity  of  our  dying.  So  far  as  we  are 
permitted  to  follow  the  experiences  of  the  dying  up 
towards  the  very  moment  when  the  gates  of  consciousness 
on  this  side  are  closed,  —  at  least  among-  those  who  have 
so  lived  that  they  are  well  prepared  to  take  the  next  step 
of  life  througli  death,  —  we  may  often  witness  a  spiritual 
greeting  by  them  of  death,  and  perceive  exercised  by  them 
a  strength  of  soul  in  the  immediate  contact  with  death, 
which  is  more  than  a  passive  and  compulsory  acquiescence 
in  it.  The  soul  becomes  an  interested  and  active  moral 
participant  in  the  dissolution  of  this  mortality.  The  spirit 
will  summon  up  its  interior  energies,  concentrate  its  powers 
of  life  in  one  single  act  of  faith,  and  march  on  with  strength 
even  through  the  gates  of  death.  There  is  spiritual  victory 
in  its  last  prayer,  and  triumphal  act  of  self-committal  to 
the  divine  decree  of  its  death.  So  Christians  have  died. 
So  the  death  of  the  Son  of  man  was  an  act  of  his  spirit 


338  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

in  the  discharge  of  the  duty  for  which  his  whole  life  had 
been  sent  from  God.  Christ  in  his  last  words  on  the  cross 
met  death  not  passively,  but  actively,  in  an  outgoing  faith 
of  soul,  with  a  will  of  entire  obedience,  and  by  an  act  of 
complete  committal  of  himself  to  the  living  God:  "  Father, 
into  thy  hands  I  commend  my  spirit."  Thus  death  to  the 
Son  of  man  was  no  fatality ;  no  imposition  of  necessity  to 
Avhich  he  must  bow ;  no  dread  and  loss  of  soul ;  but  dying 
to  the  Christ  was  an  intense  moment  of  spiritual  life ;  for 
the  Christ  to  die  was  to  win  the  victory  over  death. 
Henceforth  the  dutiful  Christian  sense  of  death  is  to  be 
expressed  in  that  apostolic  word  of  triumph  over  it, — 
"  O  death,  where  is  thy  victorj^ !  " 

Such  being  the  Christian  duty  of  the  self-preservation 
of  spiritual  life  through  death,  it  follows  that  certain  com- 
monly cherished  thoughts  with  regard  to  death  are  not  to 
be  held  as  ethical  by  the  Christian  conscience.  There  are, 
in  particular,  two  opposite  thoughts  of  death  which  fall 
under  the  same  moral  condemnation.  The  one  is  an 
excessive  shrinking  from  the  thought  of  death.  Aristotle 
expressed  the  dismal  thought  of  death  which  haunted  the 
joy  of  ancient  life,  when  he  said,  "Death  is  the  most 
terrible  of  all  things ;  for  it  is  a  limit ;  and  it  is  thought 
that  to  the  dead  there  is  nothing  beyond,  either  good  or 
bad."  1  But  to  the  Christian  faith  death  is  no  more  a  limit 
of  life.  It  is  something  ignoble  to  live  in  the  fear  of  death, 
and  this  natural  ignobleness  of  the  fear  of  death  to  the 
spirit  of  a  man  is  left  without  excuse  in  the  Christian 
revelation  of  death  as  the  gate  of  life.  A  human  soul 
living  in  the  communion  of  the  Holy  Ghost  ought  not  to 
be  held  in  bondage  by  the  fear  of  death.  Our  funeral 
customs,  so  far  as  they  are  not  brightened  by  a  cheerful 
hope,  and  our  signs  of  grief,  so  far  as  they  are  not  symbols 
also  of  the  promise  of  the  richer  life,  are  pagan  and  not 
Christian  customs.  If  something  is  due  to  the  expression 
of  our  present  sorrow  and  loss,  something  also  would  seem 
to  be  required  in  our  emblems  of  mourning  as  expression  of 
our  prophetic  sense  of  love's  eternal  gain  in  the  life  that 

^  Nic.  Eth.  hi.  6. 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    SELF   AS    A   MOIIAL   EXD  339 

has  entered  into  its  heavenly  completion.  The  early  be- 
lievers followed  a  Christian  impulse  when  they  clothed 
themselves  in  white  and  observed  as  feast-days  the  deaths 
of  the  martyrs  and  saints.  The  ethics  of  the  Christian 
hope  of  life  has  no  little  reformatory  work  to  do  among 
tlie  funeral  customs  and  emblems  which  have  survived 
from  the  hopelessness  of  a  world  that  knew  not  the  risen 
Lord. 

Another  and  opposite  unethical  feeling  with  regard  to 
death  consists  in  an  excessive  desire  for  it.  A  sentimental 
longing  for  death  betrays  sometimes  a  weakness  of  soul  in 
its  grasp  upon  the  moral  task  of  life.  We  were  born  to 
live,  not  to  die.  Life  is  always  present  opportunity  and 
present  obligation.  To  long  to  escape  from  life  is  usually 
a  desire  to  avoid  present  duty.  There  is  no  virtue  in  vain 
indulgence  in  the  luxury  of  grief.  Hope  of  the  hereafter 
and  its  completions  may  be  welcomed  as  love's  own 
prophet  in  the  soul;  but  duty  is  man's  daily  and  ever 
present  friend;  and  when  all  else  seems  taken,  duty,  and 
its  strong  friendship,  will  remain. 

(6)  The  consideration  already  noticed  that  the  duty  of 
self-preservation  is  a  limited  duty,  opens  another  question 
which  from  antiquity  has  engaged  the  attention  of  moral- 
ists :  Has  a  man  ever  the  right  to  take  his  own  life  ?  If 
he  has  such  right,  can  suicide  ever  be  regarded  as  a  duty  ? 
Or  is  the  duty  of  self-preservation  an  absolute  obligation 
so  far  as  our  power  over  our  own  physical  life  is  concerned  ? 

The  instinctive  conscience  of  mankind  has  had  in  all  the 
generations  but  one  voice  in  this  matter.  But  the  educated 
conscience  has  not  always  spoken  with  clear  tones  concern- 
ing suicide.  The  natural  judgment  of  mankind  has  looked 
upon  it  with  abhorrence  ;  the  philosophers  have  sometimes 
contemplated  it  with  favor.  What  does  the  spiritual  con- 
science, the  conscience  informed  with  the  Spirit  of  Christ, 
have  to  say  about  it  ?  Or  must  we  decide  between  nature 
and  the  philosophers  without  any  further  light  from  the 
Christian  consciousness  of  the  siofnificance  of  life  ? 

Let  us  see  first  how  the  matter  stands  between  nature 
and  some  of  the  philosophers.     A  common  Grecian  concep- 


840  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

tion  of  life  led  the  people  to  regard  suicide  not  only  as  un- 
natural, but  also  as  an  unauthorized  breach  by  the  individ- 
ual will  of  the  social  order  into  which  man  is  born,  and  to 
which  every  citizen  is  under  obligation.  Aristotle,  with 
his  practical  ethical  sense,  reflects  also  a  common  attitude  of 
the  Grecian  mind  toward  suicide  when  he  pronounces  it  to 
be  cowardice.^  The  Stoics  and  the  Epicureans,  however, 
did  not  agree  with  Aristotle  in  this  matter ;  although  rea- 
soning from  different  starting-points,  they  both  reached  the 
conclusion  that  suicide  is  permissible,  and  even  to  be  com- 
mended wdien  there  seem  to  be  good  reasons  for  it.  It  is 
noteworthy  that  when  once  any  cause  had  been  admitted 
to  be  an  adversity  sufficient  to  justifj^  suicide,  the  number 
of  such  exceptional  reasons  for  self-destruction  continually 
increased,  until  trivial  misfortunes  were  regarded  as  suffi- 
cient occasions  for  bidding  farewell  to  life.  It  w^as  said 
that  only  a  single  way  leads  into  life,  but  a  thousand  ways 
lead  out  of  it.  "  The  door  is  open,"  —  such  was  the  doc- 
trine of  the  possible  exit  from  life  which  was  preached  by 
the  Stoics,  and  with  increasing  facility  their  practice  fol- 
lowed the  theory.  Slight  ailments  were  sometimes  deemed 
sufficient  provocations  for  so  serious  a  step.  Zeno  is  said 
in  his  old  age  to  have  hanged  himself  because  he  had  broken 
one  of  his  fingers ;  and  his  disciple,  Cleanthes,  chose  to 
starve  himself  to  death  because  his  gums  were  sore. 
'  It  is  significant  that  modern  statistics  of  suicide  show  a 
larger  proportion  of  self-inflicted  deaths  among  the  higher 
and  more  educated  classes  than  among  those  who  live  closer 
to  nature,  or  whose  labor  brings  them  into  wholesome  touch 
with  the  soil.^  This  may  be  due  in  part  to  the  increased 
liability  to  brain  diseases  which  accompany  a  disproportion- 
ate use  of  that  organ ;  and  it  may  result  in  part  from  the 
higher  pressures  of  life  and  the  more  sudden  shocks  of 
excitement  to  which  the  upper  and  wealthier  classes  are 
exposed.     But  we  may  discover  in  it  also  a  tendency  in 

1  "  But  to  die,  and  thus  avoid  poverty  or  love,  or  anything  painful,  is  not  the 
part  of  a  brave  man,  but  rather  of  a  coward;  for  it  is  cowardice  to  avoid 
trouble  ;  and  the  suicide  does  not  undergo  death  because  it  is  honorable,  but  in 
order  to  avoid  evil."  — Nic.  Eth.  iii.  7. 

2  See  Paulsen,  System  der  Eihik,s.  460, 


DUTIES   TOWAEDS    SELF    AS   A   MOIIAL   END  341 

modern  civilization  to  repeat  the  phenomenon  which  the 
ancient  world  presented  in  its  earlier  instinctive  abhorrence 
of  self-destrnction  and  its  subsequent  artificial  justification 
of  suicide  among  the  philosophers.^ 

The  judgment  of  the  Christian  conscience  on  this  subject 
in  the  first  centuries  was  somewhat  confused  by  the  exam- 
ples of  the  voluntary  surrender  of  life  vdiich  the  Christians 
found  in  such  stories  as  Samson's  destruction  of  himself 
with  the  whole  house  in  which  he  had  been  imprisoned ; 
and  the  cruelties  of  persecutors,  who  violated  all  rights  of 
men  and  women,  seemed  at  times  to  render  suicide  for  the 
Christian  the  only  honorable  way  of  escape.^  In  time,  how- 
ever, the  conscience  of  the  Church  affirmed  with  vigor  the 
verdict  of  nature  against  the  suicide ;  his  burial  was  forbid- 
den on  consecrated  ground. 

Latterly  only  occasional  voices  of  questioning  have  been 
raised  as  to  the  ethics  of  suicide. 

One  of  the  latest  German  writers,  Paulsen  (who  follows  in  general  the 
Aristotelian  ethics),  has  cautiously  defended  the  act  of  suicide  from  the 
implication  of  the  charge  of  immorality  (opus  cit.  s.  462).  Paulsen's  dis- 
cussion of  the  subject,  however,  rests  entirely  on  certain  utilitarian  con- 
siderations concerning  the  value  of  life  under  all  circumstances  ;  and  he 
urges  that  suicide  does  not  necessarily  imply  a  degree  of  hardened  obliq- 
uity on  the  part  of  the  person  who  flings  away  life,  for  as  matter  of  fact 
suicides  are  rare  among  the  shameless  classes,  while  the  person  who  has 
moral  sense  enough  to  feel  shame  or  disgrace,  the  man  who  is  under  an 
overpowering  sense  of  self-condemnation,  will  sit  as  judge  upon  himself, 
pronounce  his  own  sentence,  and  act  as  his  own  executioner.  So  Paulsen 
argues  the  act  of  Judas  in  hanging  himself,  instead  of  getting  what  he 
could  from  the  use  of  the  thirty  pieces  of  silver,  indicates  that  he  was  not 


1  In  the  legal  codes  of  the  Hebrews  no  mention  is  made  of  suicide,  and  we 
must  refer  to  a  later  period  the  origin  of  the  custom  which  Josephus  mentions 
of  leaving  the  bodies  of  those  who  have  taken  their  own  life  unburied  until  sun- 
set, as  well  as  his  saying  that  this  "  crime  is  punished  by  our  most  wise  law- 
giver." —  Helium  Jud.  iii.  8. 

2  Eusebius  mentions  with  e^ddent  approval  instances  in  which  holy  and  ad- 
mirable women  escaped  violation  by  self-destruction  (B.  viii.  12, 14).  Of  a  Chris- 
tian woman,  illustrious  at  Alexandria,  whom  the  Emperor  Maxentius  attempted 
to  overcome,  he  relates :  "  She  requested  but  a  little  time,  as  if  now  for  the  pur- 
pose of  adorning  her  body :  she  then  entered  her  chamber,  and  when  alone 
thrust  a  sword  into  her  breast.  Thus  dying  immediately,  she  indeed  left  her 
body  to  the  conductors;  but  in  her  deed,  more  effectually  than  any  lansruasre, 
proclaims  to  all  who  are  now  and  will  be  hereafter,  that  virtue,  which  prevails 
among  Christians,  is  the  only  invincible  and  imperishable  possession." 


342  CHRISTIAN   ETHIGS 

totally  depraved,  and  had  not  lost  all  sense  of  shame.  Plausible,  how- 
ever, as  may  seem  the  utilitarian  considerations  to  which  Paulsen  refers 
in  his  cautious  plea  for  the  morality  of  certain  cases  of  suicide,  his  argu- 
ment lies  wholly  on  the  surface  of  life,  and  does  not  reach  down  to  any 
essential  and  permanent  ethical  principle.  A  review  of  the  history  of 
opinions  on  this  subject  may  be  found  in  Lecky's  Hist,  of  European  Morals^ 
vol,  ii.  pp.  46-65, 

In  view  of  occasional  utilitarian  apologies  for  suicide, 
and  also  the  temptations  of  despair  in  modern  life,  we 
should  inquire  what  light  the  Christian  conscience  has  to 
throw  upon  the  act  of  self-destruction.  No  text  of  Scrip- 
ture in  either  Testament  refers  directly  to  it,  although 
many  have  been  quoted  which  may  be  made  to  bear  indi- 
rectly upon  it.  The  silence  of  the  Bible  on  this  subject 
may  be  explained,  as  Rothe  intimates,  from  the  fact  that 
in  the  biblical  ethics  the  possibility  of  any  desire  for  sui- 
cide was  not  contemplated.  The  Old  Dispensation  was 
the  covenant  of  promise,  and  the  New  Testament  is  a  gos- 
pel of  hope.  The  Christian  life  became  an  expectation  of 
the  comino-  of  the  Lord.  Sufferinsc  was  to  be  endured, 
for  the  Lord  is  at  hand.  No  one  need  wish  to  fly  from 
life,  for  he  shall  reap  in  due  time  if  he  faints  not.  Hence 
it  may  be  said  that  the  primitive  Christian  view  of  life 
excludes  any  possible  thought  of  suicide.  The  desire  to 
take  one's  self  from  life  would  be  itself  a  lack  of  faith  in 
the  Lord's  promise. 

The  Christian  conscience  has  become  set  against  the 
very  thought  of  suicide  for  the  following  reasons.  The 
life  of  man  in  its  integrity  as  life  of  body,  soul,  and  spirit, 
is  given  to  us  from  God ;  hence  there  is  a  divine  as  well 
as  human  interest  invested  in  it.  A  man's  life  in  all  its 
powers  and  faculties  is  a  personal  trust  from  his  God.  It 
would  be  plainly  immoral  to  destroy  our  spiritual  being, 
if  we  could ;  but  the  body  is  organ  of  the  spirit,  and  is 
also  a  part  of  our  spiritual  and  moral  trust  of  being  from 
God.  It  is  our  trust  fund  of  being,  not  our  absolute 
property.  We  have  no  right  to  spend  or  to  scatter  a  trust- 
fund  at  our  own  pleasure.  Moreover,  to  the  Christian 
conscience  human  life,  in  all  its  constitutive  elements  and 
powers,  has  been  redeemed  in  Christ,  and  each  life  is  to 


DUTIES   TOWARDS    SELF   AS   A   MORAL   END  343. 

pass  in  this  world  through  his  redemptive  processes  until, 
so  far  as  possible  on  earth,  its  full  salvation  shall  be 
accomplished.  To  assume  power  to  stop  at  any  moment 
this  redemptive  process,  in  au}^  direction  of  it,  —  as  on  the 
physical  side  at  least  it  would  be  cut  short  by  the  ter- 
mination, through  one's  own  act,  of  existence  in  this  dis- 
ciplinary w^orld,  —  Avould  be  an  interference  with  God's 
purpose  of  human  education,  an  act  of  truancy  from  this 
present  school  of  life,  for  which  there  is  no  sufficient  moral 
excuse,  and  which  no  one  of  us  has  authority  to  commit. 
The  child  of  God  cannot  at  his  own  will  excuse  himself 
from  God's  school.  The  Christian  conscience  therefore 
urges  with  still  greater  spiritual  insistence  the  reasons 
against  suicide  which  moral   philosophy  has  emphasized. 

Kant  regarded  suicide  as  destructive  of  morality.  ' '  One  cannot  dispense 
witli  his  personality  so  long  as  the  word  relates  to  duties  ;  consequently, 
so  long  as  he  lives  ;  and  it  is  a  contradiction  that  he  should  have  authority 
to  withdraw  himself  from  all  responsibility,  i.e.  freely  so  to  act  as  though 
he  needed  no  authority  for  this  action.  To  destroy  the  subject  of  mo- 
rality in  his  own  person  is  as  much  as  to  annihilate  morality  itself,  in 
its  existence,  so  far  as  he  can,  from  the  world,"  etc.  {Metaphysik  der 
Sitten,  Tugendlehre,  §  6,  s.  252).  Fichte  puts  the  whole  subject  from  the 
philosophical  point  of  view  very  clearly  in  these  words  :  "  My  life  is  the 
exclusive  condition  of  the  fulfilment  of  the  law  through  me.  Now  it  is 
absolutely  commanded  me  to  fulfil  the  law.  Therefore,  it  is  absolutely 
commanded  me  to  live,  in  so  far  as  this  is  dependent  on  myself.  This 
commandment  is  directly  contradicted  by  the  destruction  of  my  life  by 
myself.  It  is  accordingly  absolutely  against  duty.  I  cannot  destroy  my 
life  without  withdrawing  myself  so  far  as  I  can,  from  the  supremacy  of 
the  moral  law.  ...  I  will  no  longer  live,  means,  therefore,  I  will  no 
longer  do  my  duty  "  (Sittenlehre^  B.  iv.  s.  263). 

Still  another  view  of  this  subject  remains  to  be  taken, 
Each  life  belongs  to  others'  lives.  No  man  liveth  to  him- 
self, and  no  man  dieth  to  himself  alone.  To  live  is  thus  not 
only  an  individual  duty,  but  also  a  social  obligation.  The 
whole  body  has  its  rights  in  every  member.  Even,  there- 
fore, if  in  the  light  simply  of  individual  duty  it  could  be. 
made  to  appear  that  suicide  is  not  an  avoidance  of  the 
personal  obligation  to  live,  there  would  still  remain  the 
further  question  whether  suicide  were  not  a  violation  of 
the  social  order  and  a  sin  against  humanity.     If,  under 


344  '  CHRIST  [AN    ETHICS 

any  circumstances,  taking  one's  own  life  might  bo  deemed 
excusable,  so  far  as  one's  personal  investment  and  interest 
in  life  are  concerned,  still  the  community  would  need  to 
define  and  to  protect  its  rights  in  the  lives  of  individuals. 
Those  moralists,  therefore,  who  limit  their  discussion  of 
duties  to  utilitarian  motives,  shoukl  urge  the  larger  claims 
of  social  utilities  whenever  a  question  of  the  right  of  the 
individual  to  absent  himself  entirely  and  forever  from 
humanity  is  under  discussion.  Although  in  extreme  mis- 
fortune or  in  remediless  and  dependent  sickness  the  loss 
of  an  individual  life  might  seem  a  gain  to  the  general 
good,  it  would  be  a  dangerous  social  policy  to  leave  the 
determination  of  the  social  right  in  the  individual  wholly 
to  his  private  judgment,  especially  as  that  might  be  weak- 
ened by  the  blow  of  adversity  or  obscured  by  disease  ;  and 
utilitarian  regard  for  the  welfare  of  the  "  social  tissue " 
would  seem  to  require  some  public  tribunal  as  the  conser- 
vator of  the  interests  of  society  in  every  individual  life. 
Suicide,  on  this  theory  of  morals,  could  be  made  socially 
legitimate  only  as  it  might  be  socially  authorized.  It 
would  be  still  a  crime  unless  it  received  some  judicial 
authorization.  The  individual  should  not  be  allowed  to 
exercise  what  is  certainly  not  simply  a  private  right,  (if  it 
can  be  regarded  as  in  any  sense  a  right,)  without  the  judi- 
cially determined  authorization  of  the  other  party  in  interest. 
On  the  lowest  possible  view  suicide  should  be  condemned 
as  an  individual  act,  because  life  is  not  simply  nor  solely 
a  private  affair,  but  is  a  part  of  the  social  order,  and  the 
relation  in  which  the  individual  is  bound  to  the  social 
whole  should  not  be  terminated  at  his  personal  instance. 
Consequently,  in  view  of  social  utilities,  as  well  as  the 
higher  estimate  of  human  life  as  a  divine  trust,  suicide 
has  no  ground  of  justification  before  the  Christian  con- 
science. Admitting  the  force  of  the  general  considerations 
which  have  been  adduced,  we  may  follow  the  casuists  to 
the  further  question  whether  there  can  be  any  possible 
exceptions  to  the  moral  law  by  which  suicide  is  condemned. 
Such  instances  liave  been  supposed  in  the  books,  and 
may  possibly  present  themselves  in  actual  life.    It  has  been 


DUTIES   TOWARDS    SELF    AS   A   MORAL   END  845 

asked,  for  example,  whether  a  woman  might  not  be  justi- 
fied in  taking  her  own  life  in  order  to  escape  inevitable 
dishonor.  But  the  real  question  in  such  imaginable  cases 
is  not  one  of  permissible  suicide;  it  concerns  rather  the 
means  of  self-defence  which  may  be  used  against  dis- 
honor. Honor  should  be  esteemed  more  than  life ;  but 
in  this  case  spiritual  dishonor  could  arise  only  from  non- 
resistance  or  some  complicity  in  the  crime.  If,  in  an 
extreme  case,  the  resistance  should  be  carried  to  the  point 
of  self-destruction,  the  act  could  be  conceived  to  be  morally 
justifiable,  not  as  a  suicide,  but  only,  under  the  circum- 
stances, as  a  necessary  act  of  self-defence. 

There  is  less  casuistry,  and  more  pathos  in  the  ques- 
tion which  real  life  sometimes  suggests,  whether  a  helpless 
and  hopeless  invalid,  who  is  a  burden  to  others  who  can  ill 
bear  the  expense,  may  not  as  an  act  of  self-sacrifice  take  a 
deadly  potion,  not  from  the  desire  to  escape  suffering,  but 
for  the  sake  of  relieving  others  from  prolonged  distress. 
This  Scripture  has  been  quoted  by  such  :  "  Greater  love 
hath  no  man  than  this,  that  a  man  lay  down  his  life  for 
his  friends,"  ^  and  the  question  has  been  asked.  May  not 
sacrifice  of  life  be  self-inflicted,  and  the  crown  of  mar- 
t3^rdom  w^on  by  one's  own  courage  in  giving  up  life  for 
another  ? 

To  this  pathetic  argument  of  helpless  and  loving  afflic- 
tion, it  may  at  once  be  answered  that  the  Christ,  who 
recognized  as  no  other  the  greatest  claim  of  love  in  giving 
up  life,  was  content  to  w^ait  for  his  hour  from  the  Father  ; 
and  that  in  following  his  example,  whatever  may  befall, 
every  disciple  must  also  wait  his  hour  from  the  Father, 
who  has  sent  the  soul  on  its  earthly  errand,  and  who  only 
can  know  what  time  is  best  for  its  recall.  Even  though 
such  a  person  should  seek  to  judge  duty  by  the  probable 
consequences  and  immediate  utilities,  no  one  can  deter- 
mine whether  the  best  service  to  others  may  be  rendered 
by  remaining  as  a  burden  which  they  are  to  learn  to  bear 
as  part  of  their  life's  training,  or  by  being  taken  bodily 
away  from  their  concern  and  obligation.     The  influences 

1  John  XV.  13. 


346  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

and  the  issues  of  a  single  life  are  too  complex,  too  intri- 
cate, and  too  far-reaching  in  their  eternal  as  well  as  tempo- 
ral effects,  for  us  to  take  them  in  hand,  and  to  decide  when 
our  task  has  been  accomplished  here,  and  the  hour  for  our 
discharge  is  come.  But  further  than  this,  it  may  be  urged 
that  the  general  principle  of  duty,  so  far  as  the  preserva- 
tion of  life  is  concerned,  admits  from  its  nature  of  no 
exceptions,  for  it  is  the  principle  of  an  absolute  dependence 
on  the  livino-  God  and  an  absolute  trust  in  the  Redeemer 

o 

of  life  from  death. 

Still  another  and  a  somewhat  different  class  of  questions 
relates  to  the  duties  of  co-operating  with  others  under  all 
conceivable  circumstances  in  the  preservation  of  human 
life.  In  general  there  is  no  doubt  of  duty  here.  Life 
is  to  be  saved.  It  is  of  such  value  as  to  create  an  obliga- 
tion to  save  it  which  is  immediately  incumbent  on  all  Avho 
have  power  to  help  save  it.  But  what  of  those  excep- 
tional instances  where  the  life  seems  to  have  lost  all  value 
to  itself  and  others,  —  where  a  person  has  become  useless 
and  worse  than  useless  from  hopeless  disease  ?  The  gen- 
eral obligation  to  save  life  may  be  admitted  as  applying  to 
such  cases,  and  all  the  laws  of  civilized  peoples  forbid  a 
savage  abandonment  of  the  aged,  the  infirm,  and  the  help- 
less. Not  even  the  hard  and  fateful  law  of  the  survival 
of  the  fittest  has  power  to  take  from  the  heart  of  human- 
ity the  moral  commandment  of  hospitals  and  life-saving 
stations,  and  all  possible  appliances  for  the  preservation 
and  prolongation  of  human  life.  But  extreme  cases  arise 
which  may  offer  apparent  exceptions.  Should  the  resources 
of  medical  science,  for  example,  be  taxed  to  keep  the  suf- 
ferer's breath  in  the  body  to  the  last  possible  moment? 
Or  should  we  be  left  to  die,  according  to  the  course  of 
nature,  when  by  artificial  means  a  life  of  suffering  may  be 
prolonged?  What  in  such  cases  should  be  the  ethics  of 
the  medical  profession? 

The  question  touches  both  the  right  of  a  man  to  be  let 
alone  to  die,  and  also  the  duty  of  others  to  help  him  in 
the  effort  to  preserve  his  life.  The  general  ethical  rule  is 
that  life  is  to  be  fought  for  by  all  the  resources  of  science 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    SELF   AS   A   MORAL   END  347 

until  the  end.  The  rule  is  based  on  the  general  duty  of 
the  preservation  of  ourselves  and  others  to  the  utmost  of 
our  ability  ;  and  also  it  is  enforced  by  considering  the  resid- 
ual ignorance  even  of  our  medical  science  concerning  the 
probabilities  of  life  or  death.  The  maxim  that  nature  is 
to  be  helped  to  the  last  in  the  struggle  for  life  is  rightly 
held  as  the  rule,  the  only  safe  rule,  of  medical  ethics  in 
the  treatment  of  disease.  But  as  science  advances  both  in 
its  alleviating  agencies  and  in  the  sureness  of  its  prognosis 
of  disease,  may  this  general  ethical  maxim  of  the  medi- 
cal profession  receive  modification  or  limitation  from  the 
claims  of  benevolence?  In  proportion  as  it  becomes  re- 
vealed to  the  eye  of  medical  science  that  the  prolonga- 
tion of  life  will  ensure  only  the  continuance  of  suffering, 
and  no  reasons  exist  in  the  claims  of  others  upon  the 
hopelessly  diseased  why  the  days  of  his  affliction  should 
be  lengthened,  it  might  seem  that  the  aid  which  medical 
skill  may  give  in  the  struggle  of  life  should  cease  to  be  an 
effort  to  help  nature  against  the  course  of  nature,  and  to 
keep  soul  and  body  of  wretchedness  together  as  a  triumph 
of  medical  skill,  while  the  resources  of  the  profession 
may  be  morally  devoted  to  the  lesser  endeavor  of  mitigat- 
ing the  pains  of  the  sufferer  and  rendering  the  descent 
into  the  grave  less  physically  terrible.  In  any  case,  medi- 
cal science  should  withhold  her  hand  from  a  positive  inter- 
ference which  would  ensure  death  ;  —  a  quieting  balm  may 
be  given,  but  not  a  deadly  potion  ;  —  positive  interfer- 
ence, in  favor  of  death,  with  another's  life,  would  be  an 
interference  which,  even  though  suggested  by  benevolence, 
no  man  has  authority  to  render,  and  which  is  also  contrary 
to  general  considerations  of  utility.  The  sacredness  of 
life,  and  God's  responsibility  for  it,  forbid  the  assumption 
of  any  medical  lordship  over  it. 

(7)  The  right  to  life  and  all  necessary  action  for  its 
preservation  extends  farther  than  the  acquisition  and  re- 
tention of  the  means  of  physical  sustenance  in  just  rela- 
tions to  the  rights  of  other  men ;  it  embraces  besides  some 
right  to  several  things  which  fall  within  the  claims  of 
a   wholesome   personal   existence   among    other    persons. 


348  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

Many  minor  but  in  their  way  important  conditions  of  life 
are  thus  to  be  brought  under  the  obligation  of  wise  self- 
j)reservation,  —  this  duty  being,  however,  always  regarded 
as  a  conditional  one,  and  in  particular  instances  of  its 
claims  requiring  to  be  morally  harmonized  with  other 
ethical  interests.  Among  these  consequential  rights  and 
obligations  of  self-preservation  may  be  mentioned  the 
right  to  privac}^  and  the  duty  likewise  of  protecting  the 
proper  privacy  of  individual  life.  Mr.  Lowell,  in  the 
"  Cathedral,"  has  called  one  of  the  evil  spirits  of  modern 
life,  ''the  New  World's  new  fiend.  Publicity."  In  this  news- 
paper age  private  life  seems  to  be  fast  losing  all  its  sacred- 
ness.  No  home  seems  so  lowly  as  to  be  safe  from  the 
intrusion  of  the  press.  No  name  is  so  honorable  as  to  be 
above  the  touch  of  the  reporter.  No  story  of  domestic  life 
is  regarded  as  holy.  All  things  of  all  men  are  considered 
to  be  matters  of  news  for  the  daily  papers  to  gather.  This 
publicity  of  modern  life  is  not,  however,  an  unmixed  evil. 
The  press  is  a  kind  of  rough  daily  judgment  of  the  world. 
By  it  hidden  things  of  dishonesty  are  brought  to  the  light. 
It  is  well  for  morals  that  some  things  which  are  done  in 
secret  should  in  this  latter  age  be  proclaimed  upon  the 
housetop.  The  deterrent  influence  of  such  newspaper 
publicity  is  no  inconsiderable  moral  force.  On  the  whole, 
it  is  beneficial  to  let  the  truth  out,  to  hold  human  life 
generally  up  to  the  broad  light  of  day.  One  of  the  great 
laws  of  progress  is  that  the  man  of  sin  must  be  revealed 
before  he  can  be  destroyed.  This  revelation  of  sin  through 
the  daily  press  may  be  accompanied  by  its  evils,  but  in 
bringing  evil  to  the  light,  the  press  works  in  conformity 
with  a  benign  law  of  the  revelation  of  evil  in  the  moral 
progress  of  the  world. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  well  to  remember  that  an  utter  loss  of 
privacy  in  our  modern  world  would  cause  much  of  the 
finest  fruit  of  civilization  to  wither.  Life  held  always  and 
everywhere  up  to  the  fierce  glare  of  publicity  would  soon 
become  a  parched  and  barren  field.  Only  the  coarsest 
and  grossest  natures  can  endure  the  blaze  of  perpetual 
noon.     The  shadows  likewise  are  iDart  of  nature's  economy 


DUTIES   TOWARDS   SELF   AS    A   MORAL   END  349 

of  the  day,  and  the  quiet  night  has  also  its  uses.  A  cer- 
tain amount  of  privacy  is  absolutely  necessary  for  the  pres- 
ervation of  the  divine  spirit  that  is  in  man.  None  feel 
this  vital  necessit}^  more  than  public  men,  and  they  find  it 
a  necessity  at  times  to  fly  from  the  footlights  of  their  stage 
of  action,  to  escape  from  "the  madding  crowd,"  to  seek  not 
health  of  body  only  but  of  soul,  and  to  gain  tone  of  spirit 
and  renewal  of  inward  strength,  amid  the  quiet  influences 
of  the  forests,  in  the  loneliness  of  the  lakes,  among  the 
mountain  solitudes,  or  by  the  great  ocean's  shore.  Some 
seclusion  is  a  vital  necessity  in  every  true  life.  The  Son 
of  man  with  his  few  chosen  disciples  would  go  into  a 
fisher's  boat,  and  withdraw  for  a  brief  space  from  the  multi- 
tude to  the  quietness  of  God's  presence  among  the  moun- 
tains on  the  other  side  of  the  sea.  We  owe,  therefore,  to 
ourselves  a  duty  of  privacy.  It  is  to  be  planned  for  in  the 
arrangements  of  our  lives.  Houses  are  to  be  built  for  it. 
The  crowded  tenement,  as  it  destroys  all  privacy,  is  a 
deadly  foe  to  morals  and  manners.  JNIoral  as  well  as 
sanitary  law  demands  the  destruction  of  tenements  which 
are  built  to  be  swarmed  with  no  regard  to  the  demands  of 
the  family  for  necessary  separation  and  seclusion.  More- 
over, limits  should  be  set  by  public  opinion,  and,  if  neces- 
sary, by  statute  law,  to  the  effrontery  of  the  newsmongers, 
and  the  rudeness  of  the  instantaneous  photographer,  in  their 
invasion  of  the  home  and  disregard  for  the  personal  belong- 
ings of  men.  No  modest  and  beautiful  girl  should  be  left 
by  the  laws  without  protection  from  the  gratuitous  insult 
of  a  description  of  her  appearance  and  her  movements  in 
the  society  of  which  she  may  form  a  happy  and  gracious 
part.  The  good  offices  of  the  law  which  protects  the  per- 
son of  the  individual  from  violence,  might  be  invoked  to 
protect  the  faces,  the  dress,  the  private  lives  of  men  and 
women  from  the  assault  of  public  curiosity  through  the 
newspapers. 

Harmful  violation  of  the  sacred  right  of  the  individual 
to  his  private  life  and  business  has  sometimes  been  charged 
upon  democracy,  as  though  democracy  were  necessarily 
hostile  to  those  finer  manners,  and  that  happy  culture,  the 


350  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

fruit  and  flower  of  which  will  not  endure  the  glaring  noon 
of  publicity.  But  while  the  desecration  of  private  life 
cannot  be  so  hastily  charged  as  a  necessary  evil  of  democ- 
racy, this  is  a  danger  which  theories  of  social  collectivism 
are  inclined  too  much  to  overlook.  Unless  the  idea  and 
the  worth  of  the  individual,  and  his  private  life,  be  care- 
fully guarded,  "  the  new  world's  new  fiend,  publicity," 
may  yet  become  an  arch-enemy  and  betrayer  of  that  imag- 
ined twentieth  century  civilization  concerning  which  our 
social  theorists  are  dreaming. 

(8)  The  duty  of  self-preservation  requires  still  further 
that  the  inward  unity  of  one's  being  shall  be  maintained. 
Man  is  a  spiritual  unity,  and  is  under  obligation  to  himself 
as  a  moral  end  to  keep  his  spiritual  integrity.  This  duty 
of  inward  fidelity  is  an  obligation  of  truth,  and  that  in  a 
twofold  manner.  The  truth  of  a  being  to  itself  is  fidelity 
to  the  type  which  it  represents  as  well  as  to  the  particular 
form  of  its  individuality.  The  person  then  who  is  true 
to  himself  will  hold  fast  the  typical  idea  of  man's  spiritual 
being  while  he  is  loyal  to  his  own  individuality.  Truth 
to  ourselves  requires  us,  not  only  to  develop  our  proper 
individuality,  but  also  in  our  personal  growth  to  realize 
the  true  idea  of  man. 

To  keep  one's  self  in  the  integrity  of  one's  nature  de- 
mands consequently  a  self-preservation  from  all  acts  and 
habits  that  are  inconsistent  with  the  typical  idea  of  man. 
This  is  the  moral  task  enjoined  by  the  Scriptures  of  keep- 
ing one's  self  from  the  evil  one.^  Hence  the  maintenance 
of  inward  spiritual  integrity  commands  abstinence  from 
the  lusts  of  the  flesh,  and  from  all  outward  impurity. 
Holiness  requires  the  preservation  of  angel  or  spirit  from 
the  touch  of  anything  foreign  to  its  nature  by  which  it 
might  be  defiled.  Corresponding  in  its  kind  to  the  divine 
holiness  is  purity  of  the  human  heart,  and  hence  there  is 
granted  to  it  the  blessing  of  the  vision  of  God.  Purity  is 
first  an  inward  virtue,  the  separation  of  the  lieart  from  all 
thought  of  unclean ness,  and  then  it  is  the  outward  habit 
and  chastity  of  the  life.     From  pureness  of  soul  springs 

1  Matt,  vi.  13;  John  xvii.  15. 


DUTIES    TOAVAEDS    SELF   AS   A   MORAL   END  351 

clearness  of  life.  The  deep  inward  thoroughness  of  Jesus' 
ethics  appears  in  his  insistence  u^^on  the  right  heart.^  His 
righteousness  was  inward  wholeness  of  heart.  All  intem- 
perance and  lust  are  to  be  overcome  at  the  sources  of  the 
conduct,  in  the  thoughts  of  the  heart.  The  sensual  vices 
are  not  bodily  excesses  merely,  nor  are  they  worthy  of 
condemnation  only  as  wrongs  done  to  the  lives  of  others, 
incalculable  as  the  evil  of  their  social  consequences  may 
be ;  they  are  suicidal  acts  of  the  person  against  himself ; 
they  are  immediately  and  directly  acts  of  violence  against 
one's  own  personal  integrity  and  honor.  Every  lust  of 
the  flesh,  so  far  as  a  man  yields  to  it,  is  an  attempt  at 
suicide  of  the  soul.  Lust  would  kill  the  soul.  The  first 
obligation  of  nature  to  self-preservation  requires  with  an 
imperative  necessity  that  the  embodied  soul  should  save 
itself  from  all  self-destructive  vices,  and  that  the  spiritual 
integrity  should  be  guarded  and  kept  in  purity  of  heart, 
chastity  of  body,  self-control  in  the  satisfaction  of  appetite, 
and  temperance  in  the  pleasures  of  the  senses. 

(9)  This  duty  of  preserving  the  spiritual  integrity  of 
our  being  will  furnish  also  a  principle  of  discrimination 
amid  many  of  the  perplexities  which  arise  from  the  sensi- 
ble side  of  our  lives. 

On  the  one  hand,  a  healthful  spiritual  instinct  will  rec- 
ognize as  a  good,  and  seek  to  conserve  in  the  harmony  of 
true  life,  the  whole  side  of  our  existence  towards  nature. 
It  will  not  only  reject  as  opposed  to  the  integrity  of  our 
beino-  an  excessive  and  self-mutilating^  asceticism,  but  it 
will  also  rebel  against  any  moral  depreciation  of  the  min- 
istry of  external  nature  to  the  delight  of  the  eye  or  enjoy- 
ment of  the  heart.  It  will  suspect  something  false  in  a 
spiritual-mindedness  that  is  cherished  at  the  cost  of  any- 
thing external  Avhich  God  has  pronounced  to  be  good.^ 
Genuine  spirituality  cannot  be  unnatural,  for  nature  exists 
for  the  spirit  of  man,  as  it  is  an  expression  of  the  Spirit 
of  God.  Moreover,  embodiment  (as  we  have  already  re- 
marked) is  itself  an  end  of  the  creation,  —  not  indeed  an 
absolute  good,  but  an  end  of  creative  wisdom  in  compari- 
1  Matt.  v.  8;  xii.  34,  35 ;  xv.  18-19.  2  Gen.  i.  31. 


352  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

son  with  all  below  it,  as  it  is  a  means  for  the  spirit  of  man 
above  it.  The  human  body,  or  more  exactly,  the  spirit 
in  its  bodily  endowment,  has  certain  rights  of  existence, 
to  ignore  which  would  be  to  despise  one  of  the  good 
ends  which  already  have  been  reached  in  the  evolution 
of  life. 

While  thus  the  natural  instinct  of  life,  in  its  unity  of 
body  and  soul,  reacts  against  any  denial  of  its  legitimate 
activity  on  the  sensible  and  pleasurable  side,  the  same 
instinct  of  spiritual  unity  will  discover  also  the  limits  to 
be  set  to  sensible  indulgence.  The  obligation  of  preserv- 
ing our  Avhole  being  in  its  integrity,  contains  within  itself 
the  limitations  of  the  moral  exercise  of  any  particular 
power  or  faculty.  For  the  use  of  any  single  organ  is  for 
the  life  of  the  whole.  Each  faculty  and  sense  has  its  right 
and  its  limitation  in  the  unity  or  wholesomeness  of  the 
entire  being.  So  far  as  its  exercise  or  indulgence  may 
be  seen  to  minister  to  the  good  of  the  whole,  so  far  as  it 
does  no  harm  to  the  true  self  in  its  entirety,  its  activity  is 
legitimate  and  does  not  go  beyond  due  bounds.  Self-con- 
trol is  the  subordination  of  each  and  every  power  and 
nerve  to  the  good  of  the  whole  organism.  Practical  wis- 
dom in  regard  to  all  self-gratifications,  whether  these  are 
bodily  or  mental,  or  consist  even  in  the  affections  of  the 
heart  or  the  flights  of  the  spiritual  imagination,  will  be 
found  in  the  acquisition  of  a  fine  spiritual  tact,  by  means 
of  which  the  truth  and  worth  of  the  whole  life  will  be 
made  to  characterize  each  single  act,  —  the  ministry  of  all 
the  members  to  one  another  Avill  be  preserved,  and  through 
all  the  harmony  of  the  ideal  ends  and  aims  of  our  being 
will  be  kept.  But  this  spiritual  tact  in  the  use  of  the 
world  and  the  enjoyment  of  life  is  a  virtue  to  be  acquired 
only  through  much  self-discipline,  and  it  is  to  be  kept 
healthful  and  true  only  by  daily  watchfulness  and 
prayer.  No  less  high  or  less  difficult  a  virtue,  however,  is 
contemplated  in  the  ethics  of  Jesus  for  his  disciples,  for 
his  prayer  for  them  was,  not  that  they  should  be  taken 
from  the  world,  but  that  God  should  keep  them  from  the 
evil.     A  heart  blendincr  with  the  outward  world,  yet  single 


DUTIES   TOWARDS    SELF    AS    A   MORAL   END  353 

in  its  spiritual  simplicity,  and  perfect  before  the  Lord, 
would  alone  fulfil  nature's  first  obligation  of  full  and  un- 
diminished existence;  and  this  is  likewise  the  Christian 
ideal  of  a  life  in  the  world  but  not  of  it,  kept  from  the 
evil,  abounding  in  itself  and  rich  toward  GodJ 

(10)  The  other  truth  of  integrity,  which  was  indicated. 
needs  further  explication ;  viz.  the  proper  individuality  is 
to  be  kept  in  each  moral  life. 

This  obligation  requires  the  individual  to  gain  a  definite 
acquaintance  with  his  natural  inheritance  and  tempera- 
ment, to  understand  his  personal  endowment  as  well  as 
the  limitations  of  his  powers.  The  trend  likewise  of  the 
circumstances  w^hich  may  mark  the  providential  order  of 
a  life,  is  not  to  be  overlooked.  The  individuality  is  to  be 
preserved  in  the  chosen  calling.  The  vocation,  so  far  as 
it  may  be  a  matter  of  choice,  should  fit  the  man,  so  that 
in  his  work  the  man  may  naturally,  and  without  too  vio- 
lent strain,  keep  the  truth  of  his  own  joarticular  person- 
ality. To  this  extent  a  dut}^  as  well  as  pleasure,  is  to  be 
found  in  following  one's  bent.  By  so  doing  we  may  re- 
main ethically  most  true  to  ourselves.  There  is  no  virtue 
in  wasting  soul  on  impossible  tasks.  It  is  not  valorous 
to  attempt  what  nature  never  intended  us  to  do.  The 
primal  law  of  nature,  as  Avell  as  the  ethics  of  providence 
in  human  life,  gives  to  every  man  his  work.  Self-sacrifice 
is  never  ethical,  if  it  be  a  wilful  spending  of  soul  to  no 
purpose. 

The  calling  in  life  is  of  such  vital  importance  to  the 
truest  and  fullest  self-preservation,  that  it  should  not  be 
hastily  chosen,  nor  carelessly  left  to  the  determination  of 
circumstances.  For  the  same  reasons  freedom  in  child- 
hood should  be  allow^ed  for  the  growth  of  individuality. 
Education,  it  is  true,  may  require  that  some  compression 
be  put  upon  excessive  natural  tendencies  ;  but  educative 
restraints  should  never  be  carried  so  far  as  to  become  a 
constraint  of  nature  against  its  own  vitalities.  Time 
should  be  left  for  the  individuality  to  make  itself  felt ; 
some  natures  come  more  slowly  than  others  to  self-asser- 

i  John  X.  10:  xvii.  15:  Luke  xii.  21. 


354  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

tion.  Moreover,  the  vocation  to  be  chosen  should  nevei 
be  regarded  as  a  mere  matter  of  external  prosperity,  solely 
as  a  convenient  or  profitable  business.  Every  calling  to 
which  a  man  gives  himself,  by  the  very  fact  that  his  soul 
goes  into  it,  becomes  a  sacred  calling.  It  is  the  means  of 
life  to  a  soul,  as  Avell  as  to  the  body.  In  his  business  a 
man  is  to  gain  and  to  keep  himself.  The  choice  of  a  call- 
ing, therefore,  so  far  as  one  is  permitted  to  choose,  should 
be  itself  a  finding  of  one's  life.  Yet  often  in  this  respect 
providence  compels  an  outward  losing  of  one's  life  in  the 
necessary  calling  that  there  may  be  gained  a  richer  spirit- 
ual finding  of  it. 

(11)  The  important  duties  which  moralists  include 
under  the  obligation  of  self-control,  constitute  a  part  of 
this  general  obligation  of  the  preservation  of  one's  personal 
integrity,  for  any  lack  of  self-control  is  a  loss  of  inward 
unity  and  calm.  Self-preservation  is  self-possession  in  one's 
inward  wholeness,  and  in  the  harmonious  working  of  all 
the  powers  of  one's  nature. 

The  beginnings  of  this  essential  mastery  of  self  are  to 
be  gained  from  early  childhood  in  little  things,  or  the  man- 
hood may  easily  fall  to  pieces  under  the  blow  of  some  great 
temptation.  The  psychology  of  crime  reveals  often  a  fail- 
ure in  early  life  to  gain  self-control  in  minor  things,  and 
the  future  integrity  is  endangered  in  any  home  which  fails 
to  stimulate  and  discipline  the  boy  or  girl  to  decided  yet 
happy  self-mastery  against  habits  of  ease  and  sloth  and 
self-indulgence  in  moods  and  feelings. 

(12)  It  remains  to  be  added  that  our  human  duty  of 
preserving  our  spiritual  integrity  is  to  be  fulfilled  against 
a  tendency  of  evil,  and  under  the  liability  of  death  in 
sin. 

Life's  primal  law  of  single-heartedness  is  moral  law  for 
men  who  are  born  to  divided  natures.  We  inherit  spiritual 
contradictions,  as  well  as  bodily  imperfections,  from  our 
ancestors.  We  are  born  to  inevitable  moral  strife.  It  has 
been  said  that  the  most  characteristic  sign  which  this  earth 
has  to  show  to  heaven,  is  a  scaffold  on  the  morning  of  a 
day  of  execution.     Certainly  the  knowledge  of  sin  would 


DUTIES    TOWAPtDS    SELF    AS   A    MORAL   END  355 

seem  to  be  the  distinctive  mark  of  human  history.  The 
cry  of  the  soul  under  the  burden  of  its  sense  of  sin  is  the 
most  piercing  cry  of  the  soul,  to  be  heard  farthest  sky- 
wards, reaching  beyond  other  human  accents  into  the 
depths  of  the  pure  heavens.  Above  and  beyond  the  con- 
fused voices  of  humanity,  and  the  babel  of  human  speech, 
the  one  sound  into  which  in  the  far  distance  all  earthly 
sounds  might  be  conceived  to  be  resolved,  in  which  all  are 
met  and  carried  on  and  on,  is  this  cry  of  the  lost  soul, 
this  prayer  of  sinful  man  on  the  earth  for  deliverance  and 
peace.  Could  each  inhabited  world  be  known  by  its  own 
voice,  —  the  sound  in  which  all  voices  of  its  life  are  com- 
bined, —  and  could  far-off  intelligences  listen  also  to  the 
characteristic  note  of  this  earth  which  ascends  to  heaven, 
that  one  voice,  significant  of  our  human  estrangement  from 
heaven,  distinct  perhaps  from  the  voices  of  all  other  worlds 
in  space,  would  be  this  cry,  as  of  a  lost  soul,  for  deliverance 
from  sin,  —  the  piercing  cry  wrung  from  the  depths  of 
man's  experience  of  evil, —  "  Oh,  wretched  man  that  I  am  ! 
who  shall  deliver  me  out  of  the  body  of  this  death  ? "  ^ 
Christian  ethics  receives  from  heaven  an  answer  to  this 
cry  of  the  earth,  a  gospel  of  the  new  righteousness.  The 
ethics  of  Christianity  is  the  ethics  of  a  restored  integrity 
of  manhood.  It  insists  that  a  man  needs  to  be  thoroughly 
cured  of  himself  in  order  that  he  may  enter  into  eternal 
life.  It  teaches  the  moral  necessity  of  a  crucifixion  of  self, 
and  the  rising  of  a  new  manhood  from  the  death  of  sin. 
"  For  whosoever  would  save  his  life  shall  lose  it,"^  was  the 
Master's  profound  saying,  by  which  he  disclosed  the  one 
moral  method  of  salvation  through  death  unto  life.  The 
ethical  truth  and  fresh  vitality  of  the  new  Christian  self- 
consciousness  is  expressed  in  these  words  from  an  apostle's 
exjDerience  of  spiritual  and  moral  renewal :  "  Yet  I  live  ; 
and  3-et  no  longer  I,  but  Christ  liveth  in  me."  ^ 

We  are  not  now  recurring  merely  to  a  doctrine  of  grace, 
and  still  less  are  we  contemplating  a  religious  experience 
of  conversion  as  the  means  of  happiness  in  some  future 
world;    on  the   contrary,   we    are    reaching  down    to   the 

1  Rom.  Yii.  24.  2  Matt.  xvi.  25.  3  Gal.  ii.  20. 


356  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

fundamental  ethical  conditions  for  a  life  now  of  personal 
integrity.  We  are  observing  that  the  obligation  of  self- 
respect  requires  an  ethical  struggle  and  a  spiritual  renewal 
similar  to  that  inward  regeneration  Avhich  is  described  in 
the  New  Testament  as  the  new  birth  of  the  Spirit.  The 
gospel  in  its  essential  requirements  of  repentance,  self- 
crucifixion,  dying  unto  the  world,  the  loss  of  life  and 
finding  life  again,  the  regeneration  of  the  inward  person- 
ality through  the  Holy  Ghost,  is  not  merely  religious 
teaching,  or  an  offering  of  future  life  to  faith ;  it  is  ethical 
teaching,  discovering  the  present  deepest  moral  need  of 
human  nature. 

2.  Another  class  of  primary  duties  toward  self  as  a 
moral  end  may  be  gatliered  under  the  general  obligation 
of  self-development. 

Besides  preserving  our  personality  in  its  integrity,  we 
are  to  appropriate  to  ourselves  in  our  development  what- 
ever materials  of  growth  we  can  assimilate  to  our  true 
selves.  This  duty  is  the  continuation  of  the  primary  obli- 
gation which  we  have  just  considered.  For  life  can  main- 
tain itself  only  through  growth.  The  laws  of  biology  yield 
here  the  analogies  of  ethical  life,  and  the  methods  of  biolog- 
ical study  may  be  happily  applied  to  the  determination  of 
the  conditions  and  laws  of  moral  growth. 

Mr.  Drummond  has  followed  biological  analogies  with  much  moral 
suggestiveness  in  his  Natural  Law  in  the  Spiritual  World.  We  should 
be  careful  however  to  avoid  the  error  into  which  Mr.  Drummond  has  fallen 
of  identifying  natural  and  spiritual  law,  which  is  as  fallacious  as  would  be 
an  identification  of  chemical  and  astronomical  methods  of  procedure. 
There  is  analogy  but  not  identity  between  different  processes  of  nature, 
—  analogy,  because  the  universe  is  made  rationally  and  pervaded  through- 
out with  reason.  But  if  identity  be  assumed,  as  Mr.  Drummond  seems 
to  assume  it,  strict  logic  would  drive  his  reasoning  into  the  hardest  possible 
spiritual  mechanics. 

The  use  of  such  analogies  is  justified  by  the  psychological 
trutli  that  the  living  soul  is  an  organic  force,  and  is  not  to 
be  conceived  of  as  a  ready-made  apparatus  of  thoughts  and 
volitions.  It  does  not  come  into  the  world  written  over 
with  innate  ideas,  and  stored  with  the  truths  of  reason. 
It  inherits,  indeed,  aptitudes  and  facilities,  but  the  external 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    SELF   AS   A   MORAL   END  357 

world,  and  the  whole  heaven  of  truths,  are  to  be  discovered 
afresh  by  it  in  the  outgoing  of  its  life  from  its  own  luminous 
centre  of  intelligence.  The  soul  cannot  indeed  be  said  to 
be  finished  when  it  is  created.  It  is  a  germinal  being.  It 
is  a  living  point  wdiere  nature  has  been  touched  by  the 
finger  of  God,  and  kindled  into  the  flame  of  pui-e  intel- 
ligence. The  self  of  which  the  infant  becomes  aware,  is  a 
very  rudimentary  self ;  and  an  embryology  of  soul,  as  well 
as  of  body,  is  conceivable,  although  it  lies  beneath  the 
positive  knowledge  of  experience.  So  far  as  our  capability 
of  being  souls  is  concerned,  we  come  with  a  spiritual  nature 
from  the  Father  of  spirits ;  but  there  is  also  a  sense  in 
which  every  man  makes  his  own  soul,  is  a  worker  together 
with  God  in  enlarging,  forming,  and  characterizing  his  own 
soul.  A  human  life  is  not  simply  a  bringing  out  of  pre- 
existent  soul ;  it  is  winning  soul.  There  is  no  metaphj^sical 
reason  why  we  should  not  thus  apply  biological  conceptions 
and  laws  to  the  rise  and  growth  of  human  souls.  Ethics  is 
intensified  by  such  vital  conceptions  of  psychology.  When 
Ave  assume  thus  the  promise  and  potency  of  soul,  and  the 
unity  of  spiritual  being  in  every  human  child,  the  problem  of 
education  will  become  the  vital  problem  of  the  development 
in  each  case  of  the  personal  power  which  is  specialized  in 
the  individual.  True  education  will  then  be  kept  from 
falling  into  a  mechanical  course  of  mental  addition  and 
external  forcing,  and  it  will  become  an  endeavor,  intelli- 
gently and  persistently  pursued,  to  aid  the  individual  nature 
in  finding  and  assimilating  the  best  materials  for  its  growth. 
The  mechanical  method  of  addition,  and  the  spiritual 
method  of  appropriation,  are  to  be  distinguished  through- 
out the  whole  course  of  education,  —  the  one  to  be  avoided, 
the  other  to  be  studied  and  helped. 

Accordingly  the  problem  of  education  is  primarily  for 
every  man  a  matter  of  self-education ;  others  may  bring 
means,  and  guide  us  in  the  choice  of  material  for  the  up- 
building of  character  and  the  strengthening  of  any  talent; 
but  education,  strictly  speaking,  is  the  development  of 
personality  through  the  inward  assimilation  of  the  materials 
of  growth  which  life  brings  within  one's  reach ;  and  that 


358  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

each  must  do  for  himself;  the  vital  thing  in  education 
is  always  the  self-education.  A  clear  discernment  of  this 
vital  method  of  true  education  will  indicate  where  a  remedy 
is  to  be  sought  for  the  evil  which  seems  sometimes  to  exist 
of  over-education.  Many  persons,  it  is  said,  seem  to  be 
educated  beyond  their  callings,  or  their  possibilities  of  life, 
and  such  over-education  produces  unfortunate  social  conse- 
quences ;  it  embitters  life  to  many  instead  of  enriching 
it.  The  evil,  however,  which  is  thus  deplored,  is  not 
over-education,  but  an  untrue  education,  —  an  education, 
that  is,  of  men  and  women  in  the  mass,  and  not  as  individ- 
uals—  their  development  after  some  common  pattern,  and 
not  according  to  individuality,  —  a  training  which  does  not 
follow  the  lines  indicated  by  personal  talents  and  needs. 
A  first  educational  necessity  for  a  civilized  people  is  a 
system  of  public  schools  ;  yet  mass  education,  popular  edu- 
cation in  the  lump,  may  result  in  some  economic  evils, 
while  true  individual  education  will  tend  towards  social 
salvation.  But  let  us  distinguish  more  carefully  the  true 
from  the  false  at  this  important  practical  point. 

In  order  to  come  to  a  good  understanding  of  this  matter, 
we  raise  at  the  outset  the  question  whether  all  knowledge 
is  desirable,  or  is  something  worth  seeking  for  by  all  men.^ 
The  Grecian  ethics  deemed  knowledge  to  be  the  chief  end 
of  the  chosen  few.  Anaxagoras  is  said  to  have  answered 
the  question  why  one  should  wish  to  be  born  in  this  man- 
ner :  "  For  the  sake  of  contemplating  the  heavens,  and  the 
order  which  obtains  throughout  the  whole  world."  This 
has  rightly  been  said  to  be  the  answer  fundamentally  of  the 
whole  Greek  moral  philosophy.  But  Malebranche  reflected 
a  certain  distrust  of  science  which  has  occasionally  shad- 
owed modern  philosophy,  when  he  asked  the  astronomers, 
"  What  does  it  signify  to  us  whether  the  zone  around 
Saturn  is  a  ring  or  a  great  cluster  of  planets  ?  "  What  does 
it  signify  to  us  ?  is  the  practical  question  which  the  neces- 
sity of  bread-winning  may  raise  concerning  a  great  deal  of 
popular  education.  The  worth  of  knowledge  to  men  is 
to  be  determined  by  its  relation  to  two  functions  of  man's 
1  Paulsen  is  of  the  opiniou  that  it  is  not.  — System  der  Ethik,  s.  42G. 


DUTIES   TOWARDS    SELF   AS   A   MORAL   END  359 

intelligence,  —  his  power  of  mental  insight  into  the  nature 
of  things,  together  with  the  spiritual  satisfaction  of  it ;  and, 
further,  his  power  of  making  things  serve  his  uses.  All 
knowledge,  it  may  be  said,  Avhich  is  answerable  to  these 
functions  or  ends  of  intelligence,  is  desirable ;  it  is  worth 
seeking  by  any  man.  Theoretically  at  least  any  knowl- 
edge wliich  is  worth  knowing  by  any  mind  is  worthy  of  all 
men's  search.  Education  in  its  general  idea  must  proceed 
from  this  broad  premise  that  all  knowledge  is  for  all  men. 
Science  is  the  common  desirable  property  of  intelligence. 
It  is  ethically  good  to  give  to  every  man  information  in 
general,  for  all  science  is  worth  knowing,  and  may  likewise 
become  useful  when  we  least  expect  it.  Xot  only  our 
universities  and  schools  of  sciences  and  arts,  but  our  pub- 
lic school  systems  rest  on  the  same  broad  foundation  of  the 
utility  of  knowledge.  To  begin  with  an  educational  prin- 
ciple less  universal,  and  to  hold  theoretically  that  an  edu- 
cational distinction  should  be  made  from  the  beginning 
between  different  classes ;  that  the  ways  of  all  the  sciences 
should  not  be  kept  open  to  all ;  that  some  knowledge  must 
be  reserved  as  a  state  secret,  or  as  an  esoteric  science,  or  a 
religious  mystery  for  the  select  few  ;  would  be  to  turn 
backwards  the  whole  course  of  civilization  and  to  wish  to 
divide  the  new  world  of  the  twentieth  century  by  the  an- 
cient limitations  of  the  Greeks  and  the  barbarians.  A 
revived  Hellenism,  with  its  doctrine  of  an  elect  remnant, 
hardly  ventures  so  far  as  to  deny  the  fundamental  postu- 
late of  popular  education  ;  and  the  gospel  in  its  whole  spirit 
is  so  directly  aimed  at  the  salvation  of  men  in  the  mass 
that  Christian  ethics  certainly  cannot  consent  in  the  name 
of  the  Son  of  man  to  any  narrow  doctrine  of  educational 
election.  Truth  is  for  man.  All  truth  is  for  all  men. 
The  whole  heaven  is  for  every  man's  eye.  Universality 
in  the  offer  of  the  good  is  essential  principle  of  the  Chris- 
tian Ideal. 

But  because  the  foundation  should  be  exceeding  broad, 
it  does  not  follow  that  the  individual  life  should  not  build 
itself  up,  and  be  encouraged  to  attain  its  highest  excellence 
on  its  own  special  lines.     The  best  possible  specialization 


360  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

of  educatiou  is  now  the  practical  problem  of  our  whole 
system  of  education.^ 

The  economical  trouble,  we  suspect,  in  this  matter  does 
not  consist  in  over-education,  for  no  man  can  be  too  much 
educated,  if  he  has  been  rightly  educated.  Properly  indi- 
vidualized education  is  not  given  simply  by  introducing 
the  mind  to  the  greatest  possible  amount  of  information, 
nor  is  it  necessarily  a  training  of  the  man  for  some  techni- 
cal work  or  in  a  special  science  or  profession  ;  true  educa- 
tion —  the  education  of  a  man  in  deed  and  in  truth — is  his 
development,  according  to  the  truth  of  his  own  personality, 
for  the  action  which  lies  within  the  range  of  his  capacities. 
In  other  words,  and  to  return  to  our  original  statement,  he 
is  the  truly  educated  man  who  has  learned  to  make  the 
most  of  the  materials  of  personal  development  within  his 
reach.  Education  without  adaptation  to  the  receptive  en- 
ergy of  the  pupil  is  simply  over-cramming,  by  which  the 
natural  powers  may  be  weakened  rather  than  invigorated, 
unfitted  rather  than  trained  for  the  struggle  of  existence. 
A  man  is  not  overweighted,  however,  by  the  material  Avhich 
he  has  vitally  assimilated  and  converted  into  a  store  of  work- 
ing energy.  Unassimilated  learning  one  may  carry  as  so 
much  vanity  to  be  displayed,  or  it  may  prove  a  burden  in 
the  race  of  life.  So  Goethe  made  Faust  exclaim,  when  he 
groaned  under  the  burden  of  the  science  of  the  schools, 

"  Was  man  nicht  iiutzt,  ist  eine  schwere  Last." 

To  a  recognition  of  this  claim  of  individuality  in  education,  and  to  an 
increasing  perception  of  the  social  danger  of  mere  mass  education  without 
intelligent  adaptation  to  individual  povs^ers  and  needs,  we  owe  the  adop- 
tion of  elective  courses  in  our  universities,  and  the  introduction  of  indus- 
trial training  in  our  common  schools. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  cannot  fail  to  observe  that  the  di- 
vision of  labor,  and  the  growing  differentiation  of  modern 

1  Paulsen  complains  of  the  over-education  of  an  increasing  mass  of  brains 
among  the  German  youth  who  are  being  educated  away  from  the  means  of 
livelihood.  He  suggests,  however,  that  the  trouble  may  lie  in  the  nature  of  the 
education  rather  than  in  the  amount  of  it  {Opus  cit.  s.  429).  The  remark  has 
often  been  cited  which  the  Duke  of  Wellington  made  to  a  young  man  who 
applied  to  him  for  an  office:  "  Sir,  you  have  received  too  much  education  for 
your  brains  "  ;  it  illustrates  an  evil  in  our  educatiou  of  men  by  the  mass  which 
practical  men  often  have  observed. 


DUTIES   TOWARDS   SELF   AS   A  MORAL  END  361 

life,  bring  with  them  perils  of  their  own.  An  extreme 
specialization  of  education,  however  great  may  be  its  eco- 
nomic value  or  its  scientific  necessity,  brings  with  it  no 
little  danger  of  loss  to  liberal  education.  And  there  is  also 
a  certain  moral  risk  in  it.  For  the  continuous  use  of  one 
set  of  faculties,  and  disuse  of  others,  tends  to  atrophy  of 
the  neglected  powers.  The  autobiographical  recollections 
of  Darwin  suggest  the  possibility  of  such  atrophy  of  com- 
mon elements  of  human  nature  in  the  pursuit  of  studies 
which  in  themselves  may  be  of  a  high  order  of  worth  and 
of  much  value  to  mankind.^  It  is  not  an  uncommon  or  un- 
kindly criticism  to  regard  the  specialist  as  one  who,  while 
doing  good  service  in  his  way,  has  withdrawn  himself  to  his 
own  hurt  from  the  common  vitalities  and  universal  joy  of 
human  life.  Professional  life  may  narrow,  even  while  it 
sharpens,  a  man's  wits.  A  certain  broad  humanness,  a  cer- 
tain largeness  of  interest  and  generousness  of  human  sym- 
pathy, goes  with  the  true  idea  of  a  well-educated  man ;  but 
specialism  and  professionalism  are  becoming  so  exacting  that 
one  who  gives  himself  with  all  his  strength  to  his  particular 
calling  is  apt  almost  unconsciously  to  withdraw  from  active 
and  sympathetic  knowledge  of  men,  and  even  to  lose  certain 
elements  of  happy  and  healthful  faith  which  the  individual 
can  keep  only  as  he  shares  in  the  common  experiences 
of  men.  The  special  student  is  in  danger  of  losing  com- 
munion with  those  larger  and  higher  truths  which  do  not 
wait  for  us  at  the  end  of  long  and  narrow  ways  of  investi- 
gation, but  which,  like  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  are  nigh  to 
every  one  of  us,  and  which  we  may  find  as  the  rewards  of 
true  and  generous  sympathies  with  the  lives  of  men,  and 
healthful  contacts  with  the  broad,  sunny  realities  of  nature 
around  us.  A  man  who  lives  solely  in  the  light  of  his 
specialty,  may  be  mistaken  in  his  knowledge,  and  may 
lose  sight  of  the  whole  heavens  that  are  open  to  the  eyes 
of  other  men's  understanding,  as  a  person  who  stands  di- 
rectly under  an  electric  light  will  perceive  nothing  but 
deepened  darkness  beyond  its  intense  yet  limited  illumina- 
tion, although  the  sky  may  be  bright  with  all  the  stars. 

^  Life  and  Letters,  vol.  i.  p.  81. 


862  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

A  corrective  for  this  modern  peril  of  the  specialization 
of  knowledge  and  life,  is  to  be  found  partly  in  a  general 
elementar}^  education  before  the  student  takes  up,  or  is 
permitted  in  his  university  course  to  choose,  those  elective 
studies  which  may  fit  him  for  his  future  career.  The  dan- 
ger also  is  to  be  guarded  against  by  forming  the  habit, 
even  in  the  most  busy  professional  life,  of  throwing  one's 
self,  if  only  for  brief  moments,  yet  frequently,  into  the 
currents  of  the  general  human  life.  Isolation  from  men, 
insulation  from  life,  should  be  recognized  as  a  peculiar 
moral  peril  of  the  educated  mind.  The  temptation  to  lose 
one's  soul  in  absorbing  professional  study  is  a  real  danger, 
although  it  is  more  subtle  than  the  temptation  to  lose  one's 
soul  in  the  world.  A  man  may  give  his  life  in  exchange  for 
his  science,  his  art,  his  single  treasure  of  knowledge,  and  even 
for  his  theology.  True  life  cannot  maintain  itself  long  apart 
from  the  universal  human  life,  —  the  single  branch,  bearing 
its  single  cluster,  must  abide  in  the  vine ;  otherwise  the  pro- 
fessional mind  will  in  time  become  dry  as  a  dead  branch. 

In  the  Christian  life  this  peril  to  whole-heartedness, 
which  threatens  us  from  the  increasing  specialization  of 
men's  studies  and  pursuits,  is  in  principle  overcome.  For 
Christian  faith  is  personal  attachment  to  the  Son  of  man ; 
and  in  the  Christ  of  our  faith  and  our  following  there  is 
neither  Jew  nor  Greek,  bond  nor  free,  but  in  him  human- 
ity lives  and  is  to  be  loved.  The  principle  not  of  hu- 
man brotherhood  only,  but  of  the  solidarity  of  human  in- 
terests is  found  in  Christ.  Humanity,  as  it  is  presented 
in  Christ's  person,  and  through  his  life  of  universal  sym- 
pathies, is  no  longer  an  empty  and  vague  abstraction  of 
philosophy ;  it  is  no  mere  concept  of  human  nature  with- 
out contents  and  manifoldness  of  interests.  The  idea  of 
humanity,  of  the  oneness  of  all,  and  the  life  of  all  in  each, 
has  been  made  real  and  living  in  Christ ;  to  follow  him  is 
to  come  into  touch  with  whatever  belongs  to  man,  and  to 
find  one's  life  in  the  full  current  of  human  life,  out  upon 
God's  broad  purposes  for  men.^ 

1 "  The  Christian  principle  is  the  representative  of  the  true  hnmanity. 
In  Christ  is  the  true  universality  {Allgemeinheit)  manifested,  the  true  human- 
ity and  yet  in  personal  form." — Dorner,  System  der  Christ.  ISittenlehre, 
s.  443. 


DUTIES  TOWARDS   SELF   AS   A  MORAL  END  363 

Consequently,  while  the  Christian  obligation  of  self- 
education  enforces  the  duty  of  pursuing  that  course  of 
training  and  achievement  which  is  marked  out  for  one  by 
his  own  individuality,  and  made  possible  by  the  conditions 
and  circumstances  of  his  life,  at  the  same  time  it  insists 
that  the  special  life-work  is  to  be  followed  in  whole-souled 
oneness  with  Christ,  and  kept  in  the  communion  of  the 
Holy  Ghost.  The  Christianizing  of  the  special  education 
both  in  the  spirit  and  the  use  of  it,  w^ill  save  it  from  false 
exclusiveness,  and  render  it  a  part  of  the  universal  service 
and  joy  of  men. 

Besides  these  general  obligations  of  self-education,  the 
ethics  of  the  New  Testament  lay  special  emphasis  on  the 
cultivation  of  Christian  habits  of  thought  and  feeling. 
Our  emotions  are  not  to  be  left  to  run  wdld;  every  thought 
is  to  be  brought  into  captivity  to  the  obedience  of  Christ.^ 

The  Christian  education  of  the  feelings  is  to  be  accom- 
plished both  directly  and  indirectly,  by  immediate  sub- 
jection of  them  to  the  Christian  wdll  of  life,  and  through 
the  reflex  action  of  Christian  thought  upon  the  emotions. 
Often  the  latter  method  of  the  Christian  control  of  feeling 
is  efficacious  when  the  direct  action  of  the  will  upon  the' 
mood  seems  to  fail.  By  putting  the  mind  into  an  open 
and  receptive  relation  to  truth,  the  whole  mental  atmos^ 
phere  may  be  changed,  and  the  feelings  of  themselves  will 
reflect  instantly  the  light  of  God  that  has  thus  been  let  into 
the  soul.  Christian  wisdom  in  the  cultivation  of  a  happy, 
trustful  temperament  w^ill  be  shown  often  as  much  in  the 
use  of  the  indirect  means  of  the  discipline  of  the  feel- 
ings, as  b}^  a  direct  struggle  of  the  will  with  them  and 
labored  conquest  of  them.  We  can  do  many  gracious 
things  with  our  temperaments  by  indirect  methods  of 
culture,  which  we  cannot  accomplish  by  immediate  voli- 
tions. 

An  important  part  of  the  education  of  the  life  of  faith 
will  consist  also  in  the  cultivation  of  the  power  of  spirit- 
ual imagination.  For  the  gospel  is  a  gift  to  the  imagina- 
tion as  well  as  to  the  understanding.     Often  the  practical 

i2Cor.  X.  5. 


864  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

difficulty  of  believing  lies  more  in  the  inability  of  the 
imagination  to  conceive  the  reality  of  things  spiritual  and 
eternal  than  in  the  refusal  of  the  reason  to  render  assent 
to  the  evidences  of  their  truth.  And  any  religious  faith 
without  spring  and  uplift  of  spiritual  imagination  in  it, 
will  tend  to  become  a  too  literal  and  joyless  conscientious- 
ness, as  though  religion  were  only  a  straight  path  of  obe- 
dience, and  not  also  a  boundless  prospect  and  delight 
beyond  the  heart  of  man  to  conceive. 

This  valuable  talent  of  spiritual  imagination  may  be  cul- 
tivated in  those  ways  by  which  in  general  we  train  the 
mind  to  see  as  clear  realities  things  distant  and  invisible  ; 
and  also  more  specifically,  as  the  faculty  of  religious  im- 
agination, it  may  be  enhanced  by  the  habit  of  seeking  in 
nature  for  the  suggestions  of  higher  analogies  and  of  dis- 
cerning in  outward  affairs  the  deeper  spiritual  laws  of  life 
which  events  follow  and  illustrate.  Thus  nature  was  one 
open  parable  to  the  Christ,  and  human  life  a  daily  teach- 
ing of  the  Father's  will. 

The  spiritual  imagination  should  be  kept  within  the 
bounds  always  of  an  intelligent  and  reverent  reason ;  but 
it  has  its  value  as  a  help  to  faith  even  in  speculative 
thought ;  and  so  long  as  we  hold  our  conceptions  of  the 
world  to  come,  and  the  life  of  completions  beyond,  in 
obedience  to  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  they  not  only  may  be 
liarmless  exercises  of  imagination  within  the  religious 
sphere,  but  they  may  be  positive  aids  to  one  walking  by 
faith  through  many  a  hard  pass  and  beneath  the  deep 
shadows.  He  who  carries  a  vision  of  heaven  "  in  his  own 
clear  breast,"  although  his  imagination  be  dimmest  reflec- 
tion of  the  glorious  reality,  will  go  with  cheerful  heart 
even  through  the  darkest  valley. 

To  these  primary  duties  of  self-preservation  and  self- 
development  another  should  be  added,  which  is  involved 
indeed  in  them,  but  which  adds  also  a  distinct  element  to 
them. 

3.  A  third  duty  towards  self  as  a  moral  end  is  the  obli- 
gation of  realizing  in  the  individual  life  as  much  as  is 
possible  of  the  highest  good. 


DUTIES   TOWAEDS    SELF    AS    A   MORAL   END  365 

Those  particular  goods  which  are  to  be  attained  in  the 
final  and  perfect  well-being  of  man,  are  rightly  the  objects 
of  our  personal  desire,  endeavor,  and,  so  far  as  practicable, 
of  our  present  possession.  The  limits  of  this  duty  of  pos- 
sessing one's  self  with  such  objects,  are  given  in  the  state- 
ment of  the  principle  itself  by  which  they  may  be  made 
ours.  For  these  are  not  goods  which  can  be  possessed  in 
selfish  isolation ;  we  must  share  them  in  order  to  have 
them.  They  are  the  human  goods  in  which  we  are  to 
desire  to  have  our  personal  part.  As  human  possessions 
they  cannot  be  appropriated  by  us  in  any  ways  which  would 
dehumanize  them,  take  them  out  of  their  place  in  the  sum 
total  of  human  welfare,  or  render  them  prejudicial  to  others. 
Thus  the  right  of  private  property  has  its  limits  in  the 
public  necessity.  An  attempt  to  gain  as  private  property 
and  to  monopolize  any  of  those  elements,  such  as  air  and 
sunlight,  which  are  necessary  in  some  measure  to  any 
man,  Avould  be  Satanic  greed.  But  any  selfishness  of 
possession  reacts  upon  the  power  of  enjoyment,  and  belittles 
the  man  who  succumbs  to  it.  The  good  which  we  would 
tear  entirely  from  its  human  connections  and  carry  off  for 
our  exclusive  possession,  will  surely  become  evil  to  us. 
The  miser  and  his  wretchedness  afford  the  standing  illus- 
tration of  the  folly  of  the  attempt  to  possess  any  Avealth, 
even  of  so  material  a  kind  as  money,  without  relation  to 
the  general  circulation  of  it  in  the  prosperity  of  the  com- 
munity. Still  more  miserable  would  miserliness  be  in  the 
possession  of  the  finer  and  more  precious  treasures  of  life. 
And  the  higher  the  nature  of  the  good  to  be  received,  the 
more  morally  necessary  becomes  this  principle  of  possession 
as  a  participation  of  the  individual  in  the  human  joy  of 
existence.  The  very  best  things  which  we  know  must  be 
shared  with  others,  or  we  cannot  have  them  at  all.  The 
richest  blessings  grow  in  clusters.  There  are  some  treas- 
ures, and  these  most  to  be  desired,  which  no  individual 
can  gain  for  himself  alone,  which  God  could  not  bestow 
upon  a  single  and  solitary  spirit ;  they  are  the  free  gifts  of 
heaven  to  us  in  the  family  life  and  in  the  friendships  of  our 
human  hearts. 


366  CHRISTIAN   ETMICS 

The  endeavor  thus  to  possess  ourselves  of  the  greatest 
possible  amount  of  good,  should  not  be  regarded  simply  as 
something  morally  permissible  to  us,  a  privilege  only  of  our 
powers ;  it  is  also  a  duty,  —  an  effort  which  every  man  to 
the  extent  of  his  ability  ought  to  make.  It  is  the  obliga- 
tion of  bringing  to  realization  in  our  character,  circum- 
stances, and  lives,  as  much  as  possible  of  human  good. 
Onl}^  thus,  through  personal  attainments  of  it,  can  the  ideal 
of  human  welfare  be  finally  secured.  Every  individual 
therefore  who  in  his  own  life  brings  some  part  of  the  ideal 
liappiness  and  supreme  good  of  mankind  to  realization, 
works  directly  for  the  highest  end,  and  hastens  by  his  very 
possession  of  some  true  thing  the  coming  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven.  Personal  well-being  becomes  thus  an  obligation 
of  the  individual  under  the  general  law  of  the  progressive 
realization  of  the  summum  ho7ium  of  humanity.  Happiness, 
other  things  being  equal,  is  a  personal  obligation.  The 
whole  emptiness  of  our  humanity  cannot  be  fdled  with 
God's  blessing  unless  the  individual  cups  shall  become  full 
to  overflowing.  Therefore  hold  up  your  cup  of  life,  and 
let  God  fill  it. 

The  Christian  morality  of  happiness  consists  in  making 
it  thus  a  part  of  life's  whole  dutifulness.  We  are  to 
ethicize  our  enjoyment;  that  is,  we  are  to  seek  personal 
happiness  not  selfishly  for  its  own  momentary  sake  merely, 
but  unselfishly  as  our  participation  in,  and  our  contribution 
to,  the  universal  joy  of  life,  which  is  good.  The  love  of 
happiness,  when  so  conceived,  will  be  enlarging  and  enno- 
bling to  the  heart,  like  the  joy  of  the  Christ. ^ 

This  general  principle  of  the  moral  possession  of  good, 
will  be  found  practically  helpful  as  we  seek  to  find  our  way 
in  the  often  doubtful  region  between  those  pursuits  which 
are  legitimate,  and  others  which  may  prove  to  be  harmful ; 
or  as  we  become  at  times  perplexed  concerning  the  joroper 
measures  to  be  observed  in  the  possession  of  things  which 
in  some  degree  may  be  regarded  without  question  as  legiti- 
mate objects  of  our  desire  and  enjoyment.  Take,  for  in- 
stance, the  often  mooted  question  of  the  morality  of  ambi- 

1  John  XV.  11. 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    SELF   AS   A   MORAL   END  367 

tioii.  Ambition  is  a  natural  spring  of  action.  A  youth  with- 
out ambition  makes  a  man  without  worth.  But  ambition  is 
also  a  natural  impulse  which  lends  itself  readily  to  evil,  and 
by  which  the  world  has  been  cursed.  No  private  right,  no 
public  security,  no  interest  of  humanity  has  been  safe  from 
the  onset  and  the  violence  of  human  ambition.  It  has 
climbed  the  steps  of  the  altar,  and  seized  even  the  sign  of 
the  Cross  for  its  unhallowed  conquests.  Though  ambition 
brings  order  out  of  a  chaotic  world,  it  will  proceed  to  reign 
over  it  in  the  pride  of  a  Csesar.  A  world  in  arms  must  at 
length  rise  up  against,  and  banish  to  St.  Helena,  the  one 
imperial  will,  whose  awful  ambition  would  make  all  things 
subject  to  it.  Principle  of  Satanic  might  and  curse  though 
ambition  may  become,  it  may  also  be  conceived  to  be 
impulse  of  angelic  ministry,  and  strength  of  all-serving 
love.  It  is  the  outbreak  of  this  principle  from  its  moral 
bounds,  and  its  rebellion  against  its  true  uses,  that  causes 
it  to  become  a  terribly  destructive  energy.  It  is  not  ambi- 
tion, but  loveless  ambition,  that  lays  waste  and  destroys. 
The  selfish  love  of  excelling  is  the  evil  spirit  of  ambition. 
But  there  is  lawful  ambition  in  the  endeavor  to  make  the 
most  of  self  in  the  appropriation  of  the  materials  of  our 
existence.  This  is  the  right  endeavor  to  make  the  five 
talents  gain  other  five  talents.  It  is  the  moral  will  to 
realize  any  and  every  good  within  possible  reach  of  our 
effort,  or  touch  of  our  growth.  It  is  an  ambition  for  the 
largest  and  highest  life  that  can  be  gained  by  our  individ- 
uality amid  the  universal  good,  and  in  harmony  with  all 
the  laws  of  life.  It  is  an  invigorating  sense  of  our  personal 
obligation  to  fill  up  all  the  room  for  our  personal  expansion 
which  we  may  occupy  without  crowding  others  out  of  their 
rightful  space  for  existence  and  growth.  It  is  also  an 
aspiration  of  spirit,  the  eager  desire  to  grow  upwards  as 
well  as  expansively,  to  reach  in  our  best  life  as  far  toward 
heaven  as  we  can.  And  there  is  no  limit  to  the  right  of 
growth  in  that  direction.  There  is  always  room  for  growth 
skywards.  Ambition  transfigured  into  aspiration  never 
interferes  with  the  free  grace  and  sunshine  belonging  to 
others,  as  it  lifts  character,  and  all  its  blossoming  of  virtue, 


368  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

upward  into  the  Light  which  is  for  every  man,  coining  into 
the  workl.  Thus,  in  accordance  with  the  whole  healthful 
tone  of  the  ethics  of  the  New  Testament,  the  brave,  large- 
hearted  apostle  describes  himself  as  pressing  on  toward 
the  goal  unto  the  prize  of  the  high  calling  of  God  in  Christ 
Jesus.^  To  that  noble,  heavenward  ambition  of  his  spirit 
the  only  conceivable  goal  was  the  attainment  of  a  perfect 
righteousness.  Sinlessness,  and  the  power  of  doing  every- 
thing that  is  to  be  done  perfectly,  is  the  aim  and  end  of 
the  Christian  ambition.  "Even  so  run,"  the  apostle  ex- 
horts, "  that  ye  may  attain."  ^  "  Henceforth  there  is  laid  up 
for  me  the  crown  of  righteousness,"^ — thus  every  Christian 
man  may  cherish  a  celestial  ambition  for  the  crown  of  the 
true  life.  And  in  such  spiritual  ambition  there  need  lurk 
no  other-world  selfishness.  That  which  is  immoral  in  the 
thirst  for  happiness  either  here  or  hereafter,  is  the  desire  of 
securing  the  promise  without  reference  to  character  ;  if  the 
righteousness  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  first  sought,  a 
natural  pleasure  may  be  morally  felt  in  all  the  things 
which  are  added  to  righteousness  as  its  legitimate  re- 
wards. The  ethical  desire  of  happiness  is  the  desire  not  to 
be  made  happy,  but  to  become  happy,  which  is  a  very  different 
thing,  and  which  implies  a  virtuous  process  of  life.  The 
delight  which  accompanies  and  follows  moral  endeavor  is 
of  a  different  quality  from  the  pleasure  which  is  looked  for 
as  an  external  gift  to  be  tossed  to  us  by  passing  circum- 
stances ;  the  one  is  ethical  happiness,  the  other,  at  best,  is 
mere  animal  enjoyment. 

This  duty  of  moral  appropriation  and  enjoyment  of  good, 
cannot  indeed  be  fully  determined  without  reference  to 
the  obligations  of  social  ethics,  which  remain  for  us  to  con- 
sider ;  but  the  self-regarding  obligation  now  advanced  is 
one  determinative  principle  in  all  questions  of  conscience 
concerning  the  possession   and  pleasurable  use   of  things. 

For  instance,  we  often  find  ourselves  asking,  Is  it  right, 
or  how  far  is  it  right,  that  one  should  surround  himself 
with  comforts  and  conveniences,  with  many  articles  of 
adornment  and  works  of  art,  especially  since  so  much  unre- 

1  Phil.  iii.  14.  2  i  Cor.  ix.  24.  s  o  Tim.  iv.  8. 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    SELF   AS    A   MORAL   END  369 

lieved  suffering  exists  in  the  world?  How  far  is  it  Christian 
to  make  one's  own  house  spacious  beyond  the  necessities 
of  existence,  and  to  fill  it  with  furnishings  that  will  give 
pleasure  to  those  under  its  roof?  What  are  the  Christian 
ethics  of  the  expenditure  of  money  for  personal  edification, 
enjoyment,  and  recreation? 

The  part  of  the  answer  which  the  duty  of  an  individual 
to  himself  furnishes  is  not  to  be  taken  indeed  for  the  whole 
answer  to  such  questions  ;  but,  so  far  as  it  goes,  it  is  a  true 
answer.  The  word  self-regard  is  one  of  the  true  words  to 
be  summed  up  in  the  resultant  moral  obligation  of  the  life. 
And  the  answer  to  be  deduced  from  our  principle  is  simple 
and  plain.  The  worth  to  me  of  these  various  objects  is  to  be 
determined  by  their  value  in  the  terms  of  the  general  moral 
good,  or  supreme  welfare  of  man.  Their  value  is  to  be 
estimated  on  the  scale  of  goods  which  are  constitutive  of 
the  true  ideal  of  life.  Whatever  is  worthless  in  that  compar- 
ison should  have  no  place  in  my  desires  and  should  be  cast 
out  of  my  house.  Whatever  has  any  rank  or  standing  as 
judged  by  the  true  ends  of  human  life,  whatever  may  be 
ethically  admissible  as  a  part  of  the  complete  moral  good 
of  humanity,  or  as  a  means  for  its  realization,  should  have 
its  proper  place  in  my  desire  of  life,  and  may  be  brought 
into  my  house.  Take  a  picture  for  instance.  That  has 
value  as  judged  by  the  scale  of  general  moral  worths. 
Beauty  is  in  itself  an  end  of  life.  Beauty  is  itself  an  ele- 
ment of  universal  joy.  That  which  is  beautiful  belongs 
essentially  to  a  broad  and  loving  conception  of  the  true 
human  good;  and  any  presentation  of  the  beautiful  may  be 
a  means,  therefore,  of  drawing  my  desires  out  towards  ideal 
ends  of  being.  Therefore  I  may  leave  space  for  the  picture 
on  the  bare  wall.  Beauty  is  one  of  the  first  and  the  last 
missionaries  of  God's  love  to  the  world.  It  is  new  every 
morning,  and  fresh  every  evening.  The  beautiful  is 
expression  and  means  of  the  good. 

In  one  of  our  mission  schools  among  the  worst  classes  of  a  city,  the 
promise  of  a  flower-pot  with  a  real  flower  in  it  proved  one  of  the  most 
eagerly  sought  rewards  of  attendance  ;  and  the  sending  of  a  flower  in  the 
name  of  Christ,  more  even  than  the  offer  of  bread,  opened  to  the  Christian 
teacher  homes  where  little  children  had  been  born  to  want  and  were  edu- 
cated to  sin. 


370  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

Christianity  consecrates  the  beautiful  with  its  spirit  of 
purity  and  joy  ;  and  Christian  ethics  will  exclude  the  spuri- 
ousness  of  all  false  art.  Deceptive  mural  decoration  does 
not  become  the  walls  of  a  Christian  church ;  nor  should 
any  corrupt  coloring,  or  form  suggestive  of  evil,  be  toler- 
ated in  a  Christian  home.  While  rejecting  the  false  and 
the  pretentious,  Christian  ethics  will  leave  space  and  play 
in  all  the  furnishings  and  adornment  of  life  for  the  true 
line  of  beauty,  the  pure  color,  the  charm  of  music,  and  the 
fraoTance  of  the  flowers.  This  Christian  riofht  of  the  indi- 
vidual  to  the  possession  of  a  cheerful  fireside,  and  the 
enrichment  of  the  home,  as  well  as  t^  the  necessities  of  a 
dwelling-place,  is  justified  and  secured  in  the  obligation  of 
the  individual  conscience  to  make  some  portion  of  man's 
ideal  happiness  concrete  and  real  in  the  personal  possession 
and  joy  of  existence.  The  several  particular  goodc  which 
form  the  contents  of  the  ideal  good,  and  which  are  com- 
prehended in  the  fulness  of  the  eternal  life,  are  our  indi- 
vidual obligations,  our  duties  to  ourselves,  so  far  as  they 
are  now  practicable,  and  are  to  be  realized  on  the  lines  of 
our  individual  energies  within  the  bounds  of  the  imme- 
diate claims  of  others.  This  principle  of  the  Christian 
ownership  of  all  things  ^  contains  within  itself  the  limi- 
tation already  noticed,  which  should  in  no  case  be  over- 
looked :  Christian  possession  is  also  a  sharing,  it  is  a  com- 
muiuon  in  the  Holy  Ghost.  Any  enjoyment  of  our  homes, 
or  possession  of  our  property,  would  be  evil,  the  tendency 
of  which  should  show  itself  to  be  separative  and  divisive ; 
to  set  up  anything,  however  good  in  itself,  as  a  household 
god  for  our  own  exclusive  blessing,  would  not  be  to  keep 
that  good  in  a  large  Christian  ownership  of  things. 

The  principle  of  the  Christian  possession  of  things  was  finely  stated  by 
Clement  of  Alexandria  in  his  instruction  to  the  Christians  of  the  second 
century  :  "  For,  in  fine,  in  food,  and  clothes,  and  vessels,  and  everything 
else  belonging  to  the  house,  I  say  comprehensively,  that  one  must  follow 
the  institutions  of  the  Christian  man,  as  is  serviceable  and  suitable  to  one's 
person,  age,  pursuits,  time  of  life.  For  it  becomes  those  that  are  servants 
of  one  God,  that  their  possessions  and  furniture  should  exhibit  the  tokens 
of  one  beautiful  life."  —  Paid.  ii.  c.  8. 

1 1  Cor.  ill.  22.  23. 


CHAPTER  III 

DUTIES   TOWARDS    OTHERS   AS   MORAL   ENDS 

The  supreme  social  commandment  of  Christianity  is  the 
love  of  one's  neighbor  as  one's  self.^  In  the  gospels  the 
social  commandment  follows  immediately  the  first  com- 
mandment of  love  to  God.  It  is  the  application  toward 
men  of  the  same  principle  of  love  which  is  the  human  obli- 
gation required  toward  God  by  the  first  commandment. 
In  the  ethics  of  the  New  Testament  both  obligations 
of  love  toward  God  and  man  are  derived  directly  from  a 
transcendental  principle,,  and  secured  in  an  eternal  sanc- 
tion ;  for  beneath  all  the  ethical  requirements  of  Jesus  lay 
his  fundamental  religious  faith  that  "  One  there  is  who  is 
good."  2  The  multitudes  and  the  disciples  are  to  be  breth- 
ren because  One  is  their  teacher,  and  there  is  one  Father 
in  heaven.^  The  Christian  principle  of  the  moral  law  in 
the  whole  range  of  its  commandments,  as  well  as  in  its  re- 
ligious sanction,  is  comprehended  in  the  simple,  profound 
word  of  the  beloved  disciple,  "  We  love,  because  he  first 
loved  us."  "^ 

In  the  gospels  the  Christian  commandment  of  love  is 
given  in  still  another  form  (besides  the  summary  of  the 
law  which  was  made  for  the  Jewish  ruler)  in  this  saying 
of  Jesus  to  his  disciples :  "  This  is  my  commandment,  that 
ye  love  one  another,  even  as  I  have  loved  you.^  In  this 
latter  form  the  social  commandment  includes  the  Christian 
law  of  sacrifice  :  "  Greater  love  hath  no  man  than  this,  that 
a  man  lay  down  his  life  for  his  friends."  ^  The  other  and 
earlier  annunciation  by  Jesus  of  the  law  of  love  as  the  ful- 
filment of  the  law  and  the  prophets,  may  be  said  to  be  more 

iMatt.  xxii.  39;  Mark  xii.  31.  2  Matt.  xix.  17. 

3  Matt,  xxiii.  8,  9.  ^1  John  iv.  9. 

5  John  XV.  12.  6  John  xv.  13. 

371 


372  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

Jewish  in  its  form  —  it  is  a  spiritual  summary  of  the  Old 
Testament,  rather  than  an  express  declaration  of  the  new 
commandment  of  the  kingdom  of  Christ.  The  serving  one 
another,  which  Jesus  more  explicitly  taught  his  disciples, 
would  show  love  like  his  own,^  and  his  love  had  in  it  the 
willincrness  of  sacrifice ;  the  Christian  love  is  a  sacrificial 
love.  How  then  are  the  two  principles  of  self-love  and 
self-denial  to  be  held  together  in  the  same  ethics  ?  Is  the 
one  exclusive  of  the  other  ? 

If,  as  is  sometimes  said,  we  are  to  love  others  more  than 
ourselves,  the  obligation  of  such  sacrificial  passion  might 
seem  to  be  destructive  of  all  self-regard.  If  the  law  of 
self-denial,  when  truly  conceived,  involves  willingness  not 
only  to  give  up  temporary  advantage,  or  this  present  life, 
for  a  friend,  but  also  to  give  up  self  in  the  sense  of  an 
absolute  surrender  of  being  for  another's  salvation,  then 
all  that  we  have  said  of  the  duty  of  self-preservation  would 
go  for  naught.  But  the  dogma  (which  has  occasionally 
appeared  in  theolog}^)  of  willingness  to  be  accursed  for  the 
salvation  of  another,  has  no  basis  in  nature,  and  none  in 
Scripture  beyond  an  exaggeration  of  a  fervent  rhetorical 
ejaculation  of  St.  Paul.^  It  has  no  support  in  the  law  of 
self-sacrifice  which  Christ  followed  to  the  cross.  For  he 
did  not  give  up  his  real  and  eternal  selfhood  for  the  world. 
He  kept  himself  in  perfect  integrity  beneath  God's  eye. 

The  ultimate  unit  of  moral  worth  in  Christian  ethics  is 
the  Christian  personality,  or  the  redeemed  Christian  self. 
Christ  in  his  sinless  nature  is  the  example  of  absolute  per- 
sonal worth,  which  can  be  in  no  sense  sacrificed.  To  love 
another  more  than  one's  true  self  would  be  to  love  immor- 
ally, for  it  would  be  a  confusion  of  moral  values.  God 
cannot  be  morally  conceived  as  loving  the  created  universe 
more  than  He  regards  His  own  eternal  nature  of  love. 
Otherwise  He  would  deny  the  first  element  which  we  have 
observed  in  love's  sacred  trinity  —  its  eternal  worthiness 
to  be  loved.  The  commandment  of  self-denial,  then,  which 
is  contained  in  the  Christian  law  of  love,  is  not  to  be  con- 

1  Matt.  XX.  26-28 ;  John  xv.  8-10. 

2  Rom.  ix.  3 ;  cf .  2  Tim.  iv.  8. 


DUTIES    TOWAKDS    OTHERS   AS   MOllAL   ENDS         373 

strued  as  a  requirement  of  absolute  self-surrender,  or  an 
immoral  disregard  for  self.  There  are  some  things  which 
the  most  devoted  soul  cannot  give  up  for  another.  Yet 
the  law  of  self-sacrifice  may  require  the  giving  up  for 
another  of  all  but  this  inward  life  and  honor  of  a  soul. 
We  ought  so  to  love  one  another  as  Christ  has  loved  us, 
who  gave  his  life  for  us,  while  he  kept  his  soul  righteous 
and  holy,  and  full  of  joy,  before  his  Father  and  ours.  In 
all  true  self-sacrifice  the  word  of  Christ  is  sure  to  find  eter- 
nal fulfilment:  "He  that  loseth  his  life  for  my  sake  shall 
find  it."  ^  In  the  Christian  spirit  of  self-denial  the  cross  is 
not  chosen  for  its  own  sake,  but  that  love,  by  the  Avay  of 
the  cross,  may  finish  its  work.  Sacrifice  is  not  the  good  to 
be  desired,  but  often  the  Christlike  means  of  good.  The 
cross  of  Christ  was  a  cross  to  the  Christ.  It  was  suffering 
to  be  endured  by  him  for  the  joy  set  before  Him.^  We 
cannot  suppose  that  God  ever  takes  pleasure  in  self-denial 
as  denial,  in  sacrifice  as  suffering.  The  necessity  for  it  is 
moral,  teleological,  for  further  and  happier  ends.  The  only 
moral  reason  by  which  self-sacrifice  is  justified  is  the  ethical 
aim  of  it,  as  it  may  minister  to  tlie  larger  good  in  which  the 
self-denying  soul  also,  in  the  final  completions  of  life,  shall 
itself  have  part  and  share.  In  other  words,  self-denial  which 
exists  simply  for  its  own  merit,  as  is  the  case  in  ascetic  flag- 
ellations, is  no  moral  sacrifice,  and  has  no  place  in  the 
morality  of  Christian  love.  True  self-sacrifice  is  love's 
brave  means  to  love's  noblest  ends. 

The  law  of  sacrifice,  then,  rightly  conceived,  is  in  har- 
mony with  the  obligation  of  self-preservation.  The  latter 
is  moral  condition  for  the  former,  since  self-denial,  if  it  be 
Christian,  involves  an  affirmation  of  the  true  and  only 
worthy  good  of  being  for  which,  as  the  supreme  end  of  life, 
other  goods  ma}^  be  used  as  means. 

With  regard  especially  to  social  ethics  the  question  has 
been  raised.  Are  we  still  Christian  ?  ^  It  is  objected  on  the 
one  hand  b}^  some  writers  that  the  precepts  of  the  New 

iMatt.  X.  39.  2Heb.  xii.  2. 

3  So  Zie.scler  concludes  his  Geschichte  der  Christlichen  Eihik  with  this  ques- 
tion ;  and  Paulsen  treats  Christian  ethics  as  though  modern  Christianity  were 
a  very  different  thing  from  original  Christianity. 


374  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

Testament  do  not  offer  a  complete  social  ethics  for  modern 
practice ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  sometimes  urged  by 
reformers  that  we  should  recast  our  whole  social  system 
according  to  the  literal  precepts  of  the  New  Testament. 

It  is  said  with  truth  in  reply  tliat  the  spirit  is  more  than 
the  letter  ;  that  many  of  the  particular  precepts  of  the  New 
Testament,  such  as  ''  Sell  that  thou  hast,"  "  Give  to  him 
that  asketh  of  thee,"  and  others  like  these,  are  what  moral- 
ists call  personal  instances,  and  were  never  intended  as 
principles  of  universal  application  ;  in  short,  that  the  gospel 
is  a  gift  of  God  to  men's  common  sense,  and  that  interpre- 
ters should  use  their  common  ^ense  in  understanding  and 
applying  it.^ 

A  larger  answer,  however,  is  needed  to  the  question  of 
social  ethics.  Are  we  still  Christian  ?  We  take  broad  and 
clear  ground  when  we  stand  on  the  truth  that  Christianity 
has  its  true  continuity  and  development  in  the  work  of  the 
Spirit  among  men.  Christian  social  ethics  are  to  be  meas- 
ured not  entirely  by  the  particular  social  precepts  which 
we  may  find  treasured  up  in  the  New  Testament,  but  by 
the  whole  intention  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ  as  it  is  to  be 
gathered  from  Christian  history.  We  are  to  learn  who  is 
our  neiglibor,  and  to  know  what  love  comprehends  in  its 
supreme  commandment,  not  merely  by  referring  to  special 
maxims  of  the  New  Testament,  but  also  by  viewing  our 
social  obligation  in  the  illumination  of  the  whole  Christian 
consciousness  of  the  age.'^  The  Christianity  of  Christ  has 
made  needed  historic  adaptations  of  its  life  to  social  condi- 
tions, and  there  is  no  reason  for  doubting  that  it  may  have 
further  and  still  better  developments  of  its  grace  to  show 
in  answer  to  more  complex  social  and  industrial  wants.  We 
have  by  no  means  come  as  yet  to  the  end  of  the  doctrine  of 
social  salvation  in  Christ  Jesus. 

In  our  further  application  of  the  law  of  love,  therefore, 
to  existing  conditions  of  life,  we  are  to  take  whatever 
social  injunctions  may  be  found  in  the  New  Testament  as 

iThe  objection  that  the  gospel  ignores  the  bold  virtues  we  shall  refer  to 
farther  on. 

2  At  this  point  we  avail  ourselves  of  tlie  results  obtained  in  our  discussion 
of  the  relation  of  the  Scriptures  and  the  Christian  consciousness  (pp.  7G  seq.). 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    OTHERS    AS    MORAL    ENDS  375 

regulative  norms  or  particular  maxims  of  Christian  author- 
ity; and  we  are  also  to  interpret  and  harmonize  them,  to 
limit  them  or  give  them  scope  in  action,  in  view  of  all  that 
we  may  learn  of  the  beneficent  way  of  the  Christ  and 
the  progressive  methods  of  the  Spirit  in  the  processes  of 
Christian  history.  Social  ethics  need  to  be  spiritually 
discerned. 

I.    GEXERAL     SOCIAL    DUTIES    WHICH     FOLLOW    FROM 
THE   SUPREME   CHRISTIAN   PRIXCIPLE   OF  LOVE 

1.  Justice  is  one  of  the  primal  obligations  which  pro- 
ceed from  love. 

The  ideal  man  of  the  Old  Testament  is  the  just  man 
who  walks  in  integrity,  and  whose  path  is  as  the  shining 
light.  Abraham  was  chosen  to  be  the  father  of  a  great  and 
mighty  nation,  that  they  might  do  justice  and  judgment.^ 
The  righteous  man  of  the  earlier  dispensation  may  appeal 
directly  to  the  justice  of  God.  To  the  great  prophets 
Jehovah  is  not  a  tribal  God,  who  is  bound  by  his  relation 
to  his  people  to  secure  their  prosperity  without  regard  to 
their  character,  but  the  Holy  One  of  Israel  is  the  God  of 
righteousness,  who  will  not  hesitate  to  cast  off  the  seed  of 
Israel  for  all  that  they  have  done.^  An  essential  element 
of  the  true  religion  is  to  do  justly.^  The  priestly  code 
provided  with  painstaking  commandments  for  the  observ- 
ance of  justice  between  man  and  man ;  and  human  justice 
in  the  Hebrew  commonwealth  was  secured  in  the  memory 
of  a  great  national  deliverance  which  the  Lord  had  wrought 
when  he  delivered  his  people  from  the  yoke  of  bondage.* 
The  book  of  Job  is  a  drama  through  which  the  justice  of 
the  Almighty  moves  to  its  vindication.  And  the  later 
psalmists,  amid  all  adversities  and  disappointments  of  the 
national  hope,  declare  Israel's  unfailing  faith  that  right- 
eousness and  judcrment  are  the  foundations  of  the  throne 
of  Jehovah.^  This  ancient  Hebrew  love  of  justice  does 
not  depart  from  the  spirit  of  the  New  Testament;  it  is 
fulfilled  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and  the  apostles  of 

1  Gen.  xviii.  10.  2  jer,  xxxi.  37.  ^  ^[icah  vi.  8. 

4  Lev.  xix.  35,  36.  6  Ps.  Ixxxix.  14. 


376  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

Christ  declared  him  to  be  the  Holy  and  the  Righteous 
One.i 

We  have  ali-eady  seen  that  love  involves  an  affirmation 
of  its  own  worth ;  and  righteousness  and  justice  are  con- 
sequently essential  to  love  as  its  inner  truthfulness  and 
integrity.  It  needs  further  to  be  observed  that  justice  is 
not  to  be  regarded  simply  as  a  forensic  or  notional  concep- 
tion; it  is  not  merely  a  form  of  moral  procedure  between 
different  persons,  which  may  possibly  be  superseded  by 
some  more  immediate,  personal  method  of  love ;  justice 
enters  into  the  vital  and  essential  energy  of  love,  so  that 
without  it  God's  love  would  cease  to  be  in  his  world  the 
moral  power  of  universal  harmony  and  joy. 

A  tendency  in  modern  literature  to  lose  the  quality  of  justness  from  love 
is  noticeable  in  a  recent  book  which  has  otherwise  much  ethical  vitality, 
entitled  "  God  in  His  World."  This  tendency  of  thought  results  from  a 
genuinely  ethical  reaction  against  forensic  theological  conceptions  of  the 
divine  justice,  but  it  fails  to  distinguish  between  formal  and  essential 
justice.  In  escaping  from  the  legal  mechanism  of  forensic  theologies  and 
schemes  of  salvation,  we  need  not  fall  into  vague  and  nerveless  concep- 
tions of  love.  Christian  thought  may  rest  in  a  positive  and  real  concep- 
tion of  justice  as  the  eternal  integrity  of  love  in  all  God's  relations  to  the 
creation. 

Any  lack  of  a  true  idea  of  justice  threatens  immediate 
mischief  in  all  the  spheres  of  social  obligation  ;  and  the  loss 
in  our  Christianity  of  a  high  and  clear  sense  of  what  is  just, 
would  cause  blindness  to  fall  upon  the  eyes  of  charity,  and 
put  social  reform  to  worse  confusion.  Benevolence  with- 
out invigorating  sense  of  justice  is  so  mucli  moral  haziness, 
murky  as  it  is  warm,  and  debilitating  to  men.  A  strong  sense 
of  justice  is  often  like  a  breath  of  the  bracing  wind  from  the 
northwest,  dispelling  the  clouds  and  miasms,  and  giving 
the  sunbeams  a  fair  chance  to  make  their  quickening  power 
felt.  No  life  can  grow  to  vigorous  and  wholesome  fruit- 
fulness  except  in  an  atmosphere  cleared  by  justice  for  the 
full  power  and  joy  of  love. 

A  prompt,  strong  sense  of  justice  is  indispensable  to  a 
thoroughly  helpful  manliness.  No  one  can  be  a  leader  and 
inspirer  of  men  who  is  not  just,  and  who  is  not  quick  to 

1  Acts  iii.  14. 


DUTIES   TOWARDS   OTHERS   AS   MORAL   ENDS         877 

feel  injustice.  What  would  the  prophets  of  old  have  been  — 
what  would  the  pages  of  Isaiah  or  Amos  be  —  if  a  flaming 
sense  of  justice  had  not  burned  in  their  words.  Their  voices 
have  power  to  stir  men  still,  like  a  trumpet,  because  their 
prophecies  ring  with  the  commandment  of  the  pure  and 
absolute  justice  of  Jehovah, 

When  we  analyze  further  the  obligation  of  justice,  it 
will  be  found  to  be  of  a  twofold  nature  ;  the  duty  of  justice 
is  to  be  pursued  in  two  distinct  directions. 

(1)  It  is  obligation  of  personal  justness.  The  individual 
is  to  be  himself  a  just  man.  He  is  to  act  fairly  in  his 
personal  dealings  with  his  fellowmen.  The  creed  of  per- 
sonal justness  is  simple  and  thorough,  —  "Cast  out  first 
the  beam  out  of  thine  own  eye  "  ;  see  things  as  they  are ; 
judge  the  truth;  look  upon  life  fairly  without  color  of 
prejudice  or  distortion  of  passion.  And  the  Christian 
promise,  in  which  the  creed  of  personal  justness  closes, 
is  equally  simple, — "If  ye  are  reproached  for  the  name  of 
Christ,  blessed  are  ye  " ;  "  the  just  shall  live  by  faith  " ;  the 
earth  waits,  and  the  heavens  are  reserved,  for  the  victory 
and  the  reign  of  the  just  One. 

The  application  of  personal  justice  to  daily  life  demands 
vigorous  moral  training  and  ceaseless  vigilance.  A  watchful 
eye  is  necessary  always  in  order  that  one  may  do  no  injustice 
among  his  fellowmen.  To  the  clear  sense  of  justice  the 
least  things  as  well  as  the  greatest  need  to  be  brought. 
Justice  is  a  daily  obligation  in  many  little  things.  The 
habit  of  justice,  acquired  by  much  self-discipline,  and 
perhaps  through  many  failures,  will  become  a  fine  spiritual 
tact  for  right  judgment  and  right  doing;  the  quality  of 
justness,  tempered  with  mercy,  is  a  sweet  reasonableness 
of  character,  which  is  one  of  the  most  delightful  domestic 
virtues,  as  well  as  a  most  serviceable  quality  of  friendship 
and  good  citizenship.  A  profitable  study  of  justice  may 
be  found  in  the  example  of  the  Son  of  man  in  the  minor 
instances  of  his  instantaneous  rightness  towards  every  man 
and  woman  whom  he  met.  He  was  just  to  each  and  all 
with  the  immediate  tact  of  true  love.  Such  reasonableness 
and  equity  in  all  speech  and  act  is  the  wisdom  of  love. 


378  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

Common  sins  of  our  daily  conversation  disclose  often 
some  lack  of  this  reasonable  virtue  of  justness.  Uncharitable- 
ness  is,  in  its  principle  of  evil,  lovelessness  of  speech ;  but 
its  want  of  love  betrays  also  a  frequent  lack  of  a  just  sense 
of  life.  Charitableness  may  at  times  require  silence  when 
words  of  blame  might  be  spoken  which  Avould  not  in  them- 
selves be  unjust ;  —  love  is  always  something  more  than 
justice ;  but  where  a  fnie  sense  of  what  is  just  is  wanting, 
love  itself  may  easily  be  betrayed  into  uncharitable  judg- 
ment. And  similarly,  if  we  run  over  the  whole  scale  of 
virtues  whose  key-note  and  hai-mony  is  love,  —  such  as 
generosity,  compassion,  helpfulness,  tolerance,  wisdom,  and 
other  familiar  and  grateful  forms  of  human  goodness,  —  we 
shall  find  that  failure  of  a  just  sense  of  life  —  of  a  due 
proportion  and  symmetry  among  the  many  relations  of 
men  and  things  —  will  pervert  the  exercise  of  any  of  these 
virtues,  will  mar  their  tone,  and  even  may  throw  the  whole 
melody  and  movement  of  love  into  confusion.  Justice  is 
the  harmonic  scale  to  which  love's  music  must  be  set. 

(2)  Justice  involves  also  the  moral  obligation  to  make 
things  right  in  tlie  world.  The  whole  duty  of  justice  is 
not  fulfilled  in  the  life  of  the  man  who,  though  himself 
just,  has  no  will  to  get  justice  done  in  the  world.  We  are 
under  social  obligation,  within  the  measure  of  our  oppor- 
tunity and  power,  to  see  that  justice  is  done.  The  love  of 
justice  is  an  active  as  v/ell  as  passive  virtue.  It  is  as  a 
consuming  fire  in  the  righteousness  of  God ;  it  may  become 
a  pure  passion  of  a  soul  amid  the  wrongs  of  men.  A  strong, 
clear  sense  of  justice  will  become  an  energy  of  will  as  well 
as  a  light  of  the  understanding  —  a  fire  in  the  soul  as  well 
as  truth  in  the  intellect.  The  just  man  is  not  an  indiffer- 
entist,  or  a  cynic,  or  a  pessimist,  or  a  piece  of  pliable  and 
limp  good  nature.     The  just  One  is  the  strong  Son  of  God. 

But  precisely  in  this  respect  the  ethics  of  Christianity 
have  been  questioned  by  moralists  who  have  not  understood 
the  vital  energy  of  Christian  love  sufficiently  to  learn  how 
it  carries  in  itself  all  authority  of  right  and  energy  of  jus- 
tice. It  is  said  that  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  contains  no 
blessing  for  resistance  to  wrong  doing ;  Peter  was  bidden 


DUTIES   TOWAKDS    OTHERS   AS   MORAL    ENDS         379 

to  put  up  his  sword ;  the  Samaritan  who  had  compassion 
on  the  man  who  had  fallen  among  thieves  is  the  good  man 
of  the  Lord's  parable ;  there  is  no  word  spoken  in  com- 
mendation of  the  strong  man  who  should  beat  back  the 
robbers  or  pursue  the  thieves.  Benevolence,  compassion, 
forgiveness,  and  sympathy  fill  with  the  fragrance  of  their 
grace  the  pages  of  the  New  Testament;  but  chivalry  and 
the  manly  virtue  of  chivalric  honor  were  the  creations  of 
the  middle  ages.  Modern  Christianity,  it  is  alleged,  in  its 
insistence  upon  human  rights,  and  its  admiration  of  the 
bold  virtues,  is  a  departure  from  original  Christianity. 

These  critics  of  Christian  ethics  might  be  more  philo- 
sophical historians,  if  they  would  pause  to  reflect  whether 
some  vitalities  which  were  latent  in  primitive  Christianity 
may  not  have  come  to  their  hour  of  blossoming  in  chivalric 
virtue ;  whether  our  modern  Christianity,  in  what  is  ad- 
mitted to  be  its  larger  range  of  virtues,  can  be  historically 
conceived  as  a  breach  of  moral  continuity  with  original 
Christianity,  and  whether  the  uniformity  of  historical  law 
does  not  compel  us  to  discover  in  it  some  true  spiritual 
development  of  primitive  Christianity.  No  moralist  is 
warranted  in  assuming  that  Christian  ethics  are  not  Chris- 
tian in  their  assertion  of  human  rights,  and  their  cultivation 
of  a  sense  of  justice,  if  he  simply  collects  as  his  evidence  a 
few  scattered  moral  precepts  from  the  original  literature 
of  Christianity,  and  does  not  inquire  into  the  living  truth 
at  the  heart  of  its  growth.  Yet  without  taking  such  pro- 
founder  account  of  the  spiritual  development  of  the  morals 
of  Christianity,  a  more  careful  attention  even  to  the  letter 
of  the  New  Testament,  and  to  the  methods  of  Jesus'  teach- 
ing, might  save  such  writers  from  their  easy  and  off-hand 
manner  of  pronouncing  judgment  upon  the  virility  of  the 
ethics  of  the  Christian  faith.  For  a  little  reflection  is 
enough  to  show  that  some  of  the  milder  precepts  of  the 
gospel  carry  in  themselves  their  own  moral  qualifications 
and  limitations.  Moreover,  it  is  to  be  conceived  that  Jesus 
in  his  ethical-religious  teaching  may  have  assumed  some 
duties  as  well-known  truths  which  required  no  special 
emphasis,  which  indeed  were  exaggerated  in  the  common 


380  CHKISTIAN    ETHICS 

Jewish  proportion  of  the  virtues,  while  their  opposites  were 
neglected  or  forgotten.  Years  of  oppression  had  made  the 
Jewish  mind  naturally  resentful;  the  sense  of  injustice 
was  become  a  part  of  their  national  heritage.  The  patriots 
from  Galilee  were  ready  to  rise  in  insurrection  on  the 
slightest  occasion.  Many  Jews,  bold  to  foolhardiness,  had 
rushed  to  death  against  the  pikes  of  the  Roman  legions. 
And  the  people  would  have  made  a  political  leader  and 
king  even  of  the  Son  of  man.  But  while  courage  and  ' 
avenging  of  wrong  were  not  unknown  among  a  people  who 
in  their  national  calamity  could  boast  of  a  Judas  Macca- 
beus, the  scribes  and  doctors  of  the  law  were  not  merciful, 
and  the  Pharisees  were  binding  on  men's  consciences  bur- 
dens too  heavy  to  be  borne.  The  bold  virtues  were  not  in 
special  need  of  a  prophet  shortly  before  the  Jewish  war. 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  had  more  difficult  moral  lessons  to  teach. 
The  graces  which  were  rarest  in  the  city  of  David  become 
conspicuous  in  the  kingdom  of  the  Son  of  man.  Neither  in 
any  age  can  the  natural  gravitation  of  human  nature  be 
deemed  favorable  to  precisely  those  virtues  and  duties 
which  Jesus  seems  to  have  been  at  the  most  pains  to  enforce 
by  precepts  of  striking  originality,  and  which  he  signally 
illustrated  in  his  own  life  of  divine  sympathy  and  helpful- 
ness among  men.  Not  for  Judea  only  in  its  hopeless  hate 
of  the  oppressor,  but  for  all  lands  and  times,  the  Master, 
with  a  divine  insight  into  the  natural  workings  of  the 
human  heart,  puts  the  moral  emphasis  of  his  gospel  on 
those  obligations  which  human  self-seeking  is  apt  to  pass 
by  on  the  other  side ;  Jesus  throws  the  mighty  influence 
of  his  life  on  the  side  of  those  ethical  forces  which,  because 
they  are  the  most  heavenly,  are  most  in  need  of  illustration 
by  conspicuous  example,  and  which  require  constant  spirit- 
ual  energizing  from  above.  To  this  day  is  not  forgiveness 
a  more  divine  than  human  glory?  Is  not  the  publican  still 
an  object  of  heaven's  pity  more  than  of  human  help?  Is 
not  the  lesson  of  the  good  Samaritan  a  most  needed  lesson 
even  in  our  modern  cities,  whose  police  have  their  clubs 
ready  for  the  thieves  ?  Is  not  the  humanness  of  Christ's 
compassion  for  the  people  the  ethical  truth  which  religion 


DUTIES   TOWARDS    OTHERS   AS   MORAL   ENDS         381 

itself  is  tempted  to  forget,  and  which  always  needs  to  be 
kept  in  the  heart  of  Christ's  ministering  Church?  It  is 
no  accident,  it  is  no  evidence  of  a  limited  wisdom,  that 
the  moral  emphasis  of  the  gospel  is  found  to  rest  on  that 
side  of  civilization  which  evidently  in  all  ages  most  needs 
to  be  accentuated  by  the  Holy  Ghost. 

In  this  connection,  moreover,  the  fact  should  not  be 
overlooked  that  in  the  crises  of  Jesus'  ministry  we  do  not 
observe  a  single  waver  by  the  Master  of  any  just  right. 
He  met  the  Pharisees  with  unflinching  assertion  of  his 
spiritual  authority.^  Neither  in  the  palace  of  the  high 
priest,  nor  before  Pilate's  judgment  throne,  did  Jesus  re- 
linquish a.ny  of  his  legal  rights.  And  that  scene  in  the 
temple  when  the  money-changers  were  driven  out,  belongs 
to  the  oldest  narratives  of  Jesus'  life,  and  was  not  omitted 
from  the  gospel  of  John.^  The  hand  that  permitted  itself 
to  be  nailed  to  the  cross,  was  the  hand  that  had  held  the 
whip  of  cords,  and  overthrown  the  tables  of  the  money- 
changers in  the  temple.  In  the  truest  moral  reality  Jesus' 
whole  life  was  an  assertion  of  human  rights,  —  a  constant 
and  courageous  warfare  for  the  just  supremacy  of  love  ;  but 
the  form  which  his  conflict  against  wrong  should  take,  was 
determined  by  the  will  of  the  Father  Avhich  was  given  him 
to  do.  Could  his  work  have  been  finished  by  seeking  death 
in  the  thick  of  some  heroic  battle  for  the  right,  doubtless 
the  Son  of  man  would  have  met  his  hour  in  bravest  sur- 
render of  his  life  ;  but  his  was  a  greater  work  of  faith  to  be 
accomplished  through  a  more  awful  sacrifice,  and  the  Son 
of  man  went  as  it  was  determined  on  his  way  to  the  cross. 

The  spirit  of  Jesus'  conflict  for  truth  and  right  descends 
to  the  disciples  ;  but  the  manner  of  their  imitation  of  Christ 
is  to  be  determined  b}^  the  providential  commissions  of  his 
followers.  Heroic  devotion  has  many  forms,  —  the  Lord's 
cross,  the  martyr's  chariot  of  fire,  the  glory  of  the  battle's 
front,  the  patience  of  daily  sacrifice ;  but  the  spirit  of  con- 
secration in  which  the  Lord  gave  his  life  for  the  world  is 
the  same  power  of  moral  heroism  in  all  its  possible  mani- 
festations. 

1  Matt.  xii.  25-28.  2  Matt.  xxi.  12 ;  Mark  xi.  15;  John  ii.  14. 


382  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

It  is  not  ungracious  also  to  observe  that  when  insistence  on  rights  is 
regarded  as  the  cardinal  virtue,  a  man's  character  is  apt  to  assume  a  one- 
sided and  uncomfortable  pugnacity  ;  and  the  moral  philosophy  which 
would  make  the  conflict  for  right  the  commanding  obligation,  would 
become  loveless  at  heart  and  ineffectual  even  in  its  conflict  with  the 
world,  unless  it  should  master  Jesus'  truth  of  finding  life  by  losing  it,  and 
learn  his  method  of  overcoming  evil  with  good. 

In  view  of  these  considerations  it  is  obvious  that  in  the 
ethics  of  Jesus  what  is  due  to  the  right  and  its  mainte- 
nance is  not  yielded  or  forgotten ;  yet  in  the  teaching  and 
example  of  the  Christ  the  crude  human  sense  of  justice  is 
ennobled  and  refined  in  the  flame  of  sacrificial  devotion. 
It  is  not  to  be  denied  in  the  name  of  Christ  that  justice  is  an 
essential  attribute  of  God,  and  that  it  is  to  be  done  among 
Christian  men.  The  sure  bounds  of  justice  are  necessary 
to  the  onward  movement  of  love,  as  the  firm  banks  are 
necessary  to  the  beneficence  of  a  widening  river.  Yet  jus- 
tice needs  to  be  kept  full  of  the  love  whose  blessing  it 
bears  and  guards  ;  the  ethics  of  Christianity,  not  disregard- 
ing the  necessary  limits  of  justice,  are  most  concerned  with 
keeping  the  springs  of  love  pure  and  full. 

There  may  arise  an  ethical  necessity  of  standing  up  for  one's  rights,  and 
in  such  cases  the  motto  which  Ihering  advanced  as  a  positive  moral  maxim 
becomes  the  rule  of  conduct:  "  Im  Kampfe  sollst  Du  Dein  Recht  fin- 
den."  But  concerning  this  author's  "  Kampf  uni's  Recht,"  Hoffding 
justly  remarks  :  "  The  contention  for  the  right  is  contention  for  one  of  the 
most  important  goods  of  human  life,  although  Ihering  goes  too  far,  when  he 
affirms,  under  both  commandments  :  do  no  wrong  !  and  suffer  no  wrong  ! 
the  latter  is  the  more  important.  It  marked  a  great  ethical  advance  when 
for  the  first  time  the  position  was  taken,  it  is  better  to  suffer  wrong  than 
to  do  wrong.  Ihering's  affirmation  is  correct  only  when  from  convenience 
or  indifference  one  lets  a  wrong  occur,  or  when  one  has  lost  an  eye  for 
the  practical  importance  of  the  right  for  human  life."  — Ethik,  s.  412, 

(3)  From  the  Christian  conception  of  justice  (filled 
with  love)  the  obligation  immediately  issues  of  giving  to 
every  man  his  dues.  And  this  duty  carries  in  it  the  fur- 
ther obligation,  so  far  as  we  have  power,  of  securing  to  all 
men  their  just  dues. 

At  the  close  of  an  elaborate  confession  of  Christian  faith  which  a  Puri- 
tan preacher  who  left  England  to  become  the  founder  of  the  Eirst  Church 
of  Christ  in  New  Haven  in  1639,  the  Rev,  Jolm  Davenport,  made  publicly 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    OTHERS    AS    MORAL   ENDS  383 

"  before  the  congregation  at  his  admission  into  one  of  the  churches  of  God 
in  New  England,"  is  a  noteworthy  article  entitled,  "Concerning  giving 
every  man  his  due."  This  article  is  made  a  part  of  his  theological  system 
of  doctrines,  and  it  stands  on  the  same  line  with  his  most  solemn  religious 
avowals.  It  contains  the  social  ethics  of  the  Puritan  creed  as  follows : 
"That  unto  all  men  is  to  be  given  whatsoever  is  due  to  them,  in  regard 
of  their  office,  place,  gifts,  wages,  estate,  and  condition  ;  endeavoring 
ourselves  to  have  always  a  conscience  void  of  offence  towards  God,  and 
towards  men." 

(4)  The  means  of  justice  which  Christians  may  use  to 
get  justice  done  in  the  ^Y0^1d,  present  some  further  prob- 
lems of  duty  for  the  sound  Christian  conscience  to  solve. 
In  all  civilized  communities  there  exists  an  established 
order  of  justice.  The  system  of  jurisprudence  is  a  method, 
necessarily  somewhat  mechanical,  of  securing  uniformities 
in  social  products,  —  a  rough  and  ready  method  of  getting 
equal  and  exact  justice  done  in  human  affairs.  But  be- 
cause it  is  a  system  of  justice  it  is  necessarily  limited  and 
imperfect.  Perfect  justice  cannot  be  obtained  through 
an}^  generalization  of  legal  procedure. 

Exact  justice  in  all  human  affairs  could  be  rendered  by  the  state  only 
if  it  were  conceived  to  be  an  omnipresent  and  omnipotent  judge  in  the 
world.  The  mechanical  fixity  of  legal  forms  is  modified  somewhat  by 
the  rules  of  equity,  and  relieved  by  the  occasional  exercise  of  the  right  to 
pardon  which  is  permitted  to  the  executive  powers.  In  such  ways  there 
is  left  enough  give  and  play  in  the  system  of  law  to  prevent  its  breaking 
to  pieces  under  the  strain  and  exigencies  of  human  affairs.  But  beyond 
this  primary  and  general  justice  in  the  more  obvious  concerns  of  life,  no 
system  of  human  law  can  be  conceived  as  reaching. 

Consequently,  to  see  justice  done  on  the  earth,  resort  must 
continually  be  had,  beyond  the  legal  powers  of  the  state, 
to  the  action  and  the  influence  of  just  men  in  all  the  affairs 
of  life.  Herein  is  large  scope  for  the  beneficence  of  indi- 
vidual justice.  By  wise  counsels,  by  righteous  decisions, 
by  luminous  words  and  teaching,  the  wrongs  which  lie 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  law,  and  much  injustice  which 
has  no  legal  remedy,  may  be  prevented,  alleviated,  or  re- 
moved. Indeed,  human  justice  in  the  finer  qualities  and 
perhaps  for  the  larger  part  of  it,  must  be  administered 
outside  all  courts.  In  those  personal  relations  Avhich  need 
to  be  maintained  in  all  honorableness,  and  any  wound  of 


384  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

which  is  felt  as  the  keenest  wrong,  righteousness  and  peace 
are  to  be  preserved,  not  by  judgments  of  law,  but  by  the 
pervasive  and  healing  virtue  of  the  examples  of  just  men, 
and  their  personal  influence  amid  the  confusions  and  con- 
flicts of  social  intercourse  and  friendships. 

So  far  as  the  moral  right  of  a  Christian  to  go  to  law  for 
redress  of  an  injury  is  concerned,  the  apostolic  injunction 
to  the  Corinthians  ^  is  obviously  not  meant  as  a  precept  of 
universal  validity,  although  it  was  made  necessary  by  the 
nature  of  the  existing  Gentile  courts  and  the  novel  social 
position  of  the  first  Christianr;;  the  spirit  of  the  injunction, 
however,  remains  good  for  all  times,  and  the  precept  may 
be  taken  as  a  caution  and  restraint  now  that  the  particular 
occasion  for  it  has  passed  away.^ 

Under  this  general  obligation,  not  only  of  being  just,  but 
of  seeing  justice  done  around  us,  it  often  becomes  a  per- 
plexing question  whether  we  should  interfere  in  matters 
of  dispute  between  other  men,  or  how  far  it  is  obligatory 
on  the  individual  to  insist  either  for  others  or  himself  on 
some  personal  right.  No  general  ethical  maxim  can  be 
laid  down  to  cover  these  individual  instances  of  the  obli- 
gation of  justice.  One's  personal  position  and  possible 
influence  are  to  be  weighed  in  determining  the  duty  of 
positive  interference  for  the  sake  of  seeing  justice  done. 
Effort  without  use  even  as  a  protest  may  seem  to  be  waste 
of  a  man's  spirit,  and  reserve  of  force  for  fitting  occasion 
may  be  the  only  duty.  But  self-interest  and  moral  cow- 
ardice may  easily  hide  under  the  plea  of  the  impossibility 
of  accomplishing  anything  through  personal  endeavor. 
Other  claims  on  one's  time,  strength,  and  resources  are  to 
be  put  in  the  balance  with  the  demand  of  some  particular 
wrong  for  championship.  The  weapons  within  reach  are 
to  be  carefully  chosen,  the  time  and  the  opportunity  consid- 
ered.    The  extent  of  the  wrong  threatened,  or  the   evil 

11  Cor.  vi.  1. 

2  In  Perkin's  Cases  of  Conscience,  the  earliest  systematic  Puritan  treatise  on 
morals,  pul)lished  in  London  in  1G06,  this  question  is  discussed,  "  W^hether  a 
man  may  defend  himself  by  law?"  This  comment  is  to  the  point:  "When 
Paul  saith,  it  is  a  fault,  he  condemneth  lu^t  Jawing  absolutely  in  itself,  but  the 
Corinthian  manner  of  going  to  law  "  (p.  290). 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    OTHERS    AS    MOKAL   ENDS  385 

suffered,  may  also  enter  as  an  element  in  a  rational  judg- 
ment of  one's  personal  obligation  to  justice  ;  although  the 
quantity  of  evil  done  may  not  afford  a  decisive  reason  for 
refusing  to  insist  on  a  right,  as  injustice  at  many  minor 
points  may  gain  too  firm  a  hold  on  society,  and,  if  every- 
where quietly  suffered,  amount  in  the  sum  total  of  it  to 
intolerable  evil. 

While  these  and  similar  considerations  must  enter  into 
the  individual  judgment,  and  one  should  not  make  haste 
to  be  contentious  even  for  the  right,  it  can  hardly  be  denied 
that  the  natural  indifference  and  indolence  of  the  spirit  in 
man,  as  well  as  the  common  good  nature,  if  only  men  are 
tolerably  well  fed  and  provided  for,  tend  to  dull  a  whole- 
some regard  for  rights,  and  to  induce  an  easy  complacency  in 
view  of  public  wrongs.  Bad  men  thrive  from  the  deadness 
of  the  civic  conscience.  Public  spirit,  they  know,  is  not 
easily  aroused  by  small  offences,  and  they  rely  on  a  general 
indifference  in  the  community  to  transactions  which,  though 
admittedly  evil,  do  not  directly  affect  private  interests. 
The  spoilers  make  merry  while  the  public  conscience  sleeps. 
Occasionally  public  opinion  will  arouse  itself,  seize  its  club 
like  a  giant,  strike  down  the  nearest  malefactors  whom  it 
may  happen  to  hit,  and,  well  pleased  with  its  momentary 
exhibition  of  its  virtuous  vigor,  say  to  those  who  have 
stirred  it  up,  '  Don't  trouble  me  more  ' ;  —  and  go  good- 
naturedly  to  sleep  again.  And  erelong  the  thieves  steal 
back  to  the  plunder. 

Every  community  needs  men  of  intelligence  who  are 
watchful  of  public  interests,  and  willing,  whenever  required, 
to  throw  themselves  into  the  effort  of  seeing  justice  done. 
The  obligation  of  maintaining  the  public  interest  rests  upon 
all  citizens,  and  may  be  urged  with  especial  force  upon  those 
whose  position  gives  them  exceptional  opportunity  of 
discovering  what  just  causes  ought  to  be  championed,  and 
what  agitation  for  the  public  welfare  needs  to  be  made. 
The  educated  classes,  the  Avell-informed  men  of  affairs,  are 
by  reason  of  their  intelligence  and  resources  the  natural 
guardians  of  justice  in  a  community.  Men  have  a  right  to 
expect  of  them  active  participation  in  public  affairs.     The 


386  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

scholar  belies  his  education  if  he  can  be  content  to  keep 
out  of  politics.  Whoever  has  voice  or  influence  is  under 
moral  obli^-ation  to  use  his  voice  and  to  consecrate  his  in- 
fluence  to  the  true  cause  needing  advocacy,  and  to  advance 
which  he  has  personal  responsibility,  and  for  which  he  must 
render  account  as  for  the  just  and  righteous  will  of  God 
given  him  to  do  on  earth. 

2.    The  duty  of  speaking  the  truth. 

In  the  New  Testament  believers  are  enjoined  to  speak 
truth  in  love.^  Love  is  the  element  in  which  truth  is 
to  be  spoken,  and  speaking  it  is  to  be  a  manifestation  of 
love.  Without  truth-speaking,  as  without  just  dealing, 
love  could  not  be  kept  as  the  bond  of  perfectness. 

The  law  of  truthfulness  is  a  supreme  inward  law  of 
thought ;  —  does  it  admit  any  exceptions  as  a  law  of  man- 
ners and  speech? 

Some  moralists,  like  Kant,  have  held  that  no  circum- 
stances justify  speaking  a  falsehood.  It  cannot  be  con- 
cealed, however,  that  this  rigorous  ethics  of  Kant,  and  the 
habit  of  the  sound  human  understanding,  do  not  by  any 
means  go  together.  There  are  many  evasions  and  some 
falsifications  which  the  instincts  of  loving  natures  and  the 
habits  of  society  admit,  if  they  do  not  justify.  In  war,  in 
diplomacy  to  a  less  extent,  and  in  medicine,  the  theories 
of  the  rigorous  moralists  are  commonly  put  one  side. 

How  does  the  matter  stand  in  the  judgment  of  the 
Christian  consciousness  ?  Are  there  any  limitations  to  the 
obligation  of  veracity  ?  Before  we  are  in  a  position  to  give 
an  intelligent  answer  to  this  question  we  need  to  inquire 
more  particularly  to  whom  truthfulness  is  owed. 

(1)  It  is  an  obligation  which  every  man  owes  to  him- 
self. It  is  a  primal  personal  obligation.  Kant  was  pro- 
foundly right  when  he  regarded  falsehood  as  a  forfeiture  of 
personal  worth,  a  destruction  of  personal  integrity.  Our 
first  duty  to  ourselves,  as  we  have  already  urged,  re- 
quires truth  in  the  inward  parts.  Truthfulness  is  the  self- 
consistency  of  character ;  falsehood  is  a  breaking  up  of 
the  moral  integrity.     Inward  trutlifulness  is  essential  to 

1  Eph.  iv.  15. 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    OTHERS    AS    :\rORAL   ENDS         387 

moral  growth  and  personal  vigor,  as  it  is  necessary  to  the 
live  oak  that  it  should  be  of  one  fibre  and  grain  from  root 
to  branch.  What  a  flaw  is  in  steel,  what  a  foreign  sub- 
stance is  in  any  texture,  that  a  falsehood  is  to  the  character, 
—  a  source  of  weakness,  a  point  where  under  strain  it  may 
break.  Christian  morality  lays  tlie  sanction  of  its  sublime 
conception  of  God's  holiness  upon  this  virtue  of  truth  in 
the  inward  parts.  "  God  is  light,  and  in  him  is  no  dark- 
ness at  all " ;  1  —  the  true  God  is  absolutely  sincere,  as 
the  pure  light,  to  himself ;  there  is  no  darkness  at  all  in 
the  whole  infiniteness  of  his  self-existence  and  self-knowl- 
edge. Man,  as  the  image  of  God,  was  made  to  have  light 
within  himself,  without  shadow  of  self-deception  or  dark- 
ness of  falsehood  in  his  heart.  The  law  of  inward  truth 
requires  us  to  become  clear  as  the  noonday  to  ourselves. 
This  is  an  ideal  indeed  of  inward  sincerity  which  only  one 
has  realized  perfectly  in  a  human  self-consciousness.  The 
mind  of  man  so  easily  becomes  enveloped  in  exhalations  of 
its  own  fancies,  and  in  its  heavy  atmosphere  of  prejudices, 
that  it  may  hardly  have  a  clear  moment  of  self-revelation 
in  whole  days  of  vanity. 

This  absolute  obligation  of  inw^ard  sincerity  is  enough 
to  put  us  on  our  guard  against  practising  social  decep- 
tions, —  those  easy  falsehoods  which  without  an}'  malice  or 
apparent  injury  may  be  practised  for  the  sake  of  social  con- 
venience. Their  inward  reaction  is  evil.  Though  they 
may  do  others  no  harm,  they  may  impair  the  fineness  of 
the  soul's  powers  of  perception.  Almost  without  our  be- 
ing aware  of  it  they  may  eat  into  the  inward  soundness  of 
character.  No  one  can  wear  repeatedly  a  habit  of  affec- 
tation before  others  except  at  the  cost  of  his  own  integrity. 
One  cannot  seek  to  seem  to  be  more  to  others  than  he 
knows  he  is,  without  peril  of  becoming  in  his  own  eyes 
more  than  he  is.  Through  false  outward  semblances  he 
makes  himself  eventually  an  artificial  man  through  and 
through.  Let  this  habit  of  untruthfulness  in  little  social 
things,  and  daily  affectations  of  manners,  continue,  and 
a  wholly  unnatural  type  of  character,  eaten  out  with  insin- 

1  1  John  i.  V. 


388  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

cerities,  may  be  the  result.  Still  more  a  single  conscious 
sophistry  or  self-deception,  one  inward  falsehood  which 
is  loved,  and  not  resolutely  cast  out,  may  prove  evil 
enough  to  spoil  the  entire  wholesomeness  of  a  soul.  It 
may  destroy  the  inward  eye  for  truth  and  for  the  vision 
of  God,  as  the  point  of  a  needle  is  sufficient  to  put  out  the 
eye  of  the  body.  There  is  a  world  of  ethical  experience, 
as  well  as  the  pathos  of  a  sad  knowledge  of  the  power  of  sin 
in  a  human  heart,  to  be  found  in  that  saying  of  the  Lord : 
"  If  therefore  the  light  that  is  in  thee  be  darkness,  how 
great  is  the  darkness  !  "  ^ 

Truthfulness,  then,  is  due,  first,  by  the  individual  to 
himself  as  the  obligation  of  personal  mtegrity.  The  unity 
of  the  personal  life  consists  in  it. 

(2)  Truthfulness  is  owed  to  society  as  essential  to  its 
integrity.  It  is  the  indispensable  bond  of  social  life.  Men 
can  be  members  one  of  another  in  a  social  organism  only 
as  they  live  together  in  truth.  Society  would  fall  to  pieces 
without  credit ;  but  credit  rests  on  the  general  social 
virtue  of  truthfulness.  The  better  organized  society  is, 
the  more  complicated  its  interests,  and  the  wider  the  reach 
of  its  business,  so  much  the  more  credit  will  be  required, 
and  hence  the  more  veracity  is  needed,  as  the  cement  of 
the  whole  social  structure.  One  can  travel  the  world  over, 
if  he  have  a  bit  of  paper  in  his  pocket  with  a  few  good 
names  upon  it,  because  credit,  which  rests  on  the  truthful- 
ness of  men  to  their  promises,  has  come  to  be  throughout 
the  civilized  world  as  good  as  gold.  Anything  which  eats 
into  credit  corrodes  the  very  bond  by  which  the  whole 
structure  of  human  society  is  held  together.  Thus  the 
liar  is  rightly  regarded  as  an  enemy  to  mankind.  A  lie  is 
not  only  an  affront  against  the  person  to  whom  it  is  told, 
but  it  is  an  offence  against  humanity.  A  lying  spirit  per- 
vading a  land  is  a  sign  of  social  dissolution.  No  national 
constitution  is  strong  enough  to  endure  continual  and  un- 
punished falsehood  in  the  politics  of  a  people.  History  is 
eloquent  with  warnings  against  social  and  national  un- 
truthfulness.    When  Rome  fell,  nobody  could  be  believed. 

1  Matt.  vi.  23. 


DUTIES    TOWAEDS    OTHERS    AS   MORAL   ENDS         389 

Von  Moltke  could  not  have  so  quickly  conquered  France, 
had  the  way  for  his  armies  not  been  prepared  by  the  civil 
and  military  falsehood  which  had  honeycombed  the  last 
Napoleonic  dynasty.  A  false  dream  of  glory,  a  false  con- 
fidence in  the  court,  and  falsehood  in  the  military  organi- 
zation, were  the  fatal  enemies  to  which  Napoleonic  France 
had  already  succumbed  before  ever  the  foreign  hosts  had 
reached  its  capital.  The  new  France  will  be  a  truer 
France. 

In  view  of  the  personal  and  social  value  of  truthfulness 
as  a  virtue  beyond  all  price,  we  may  now  estimate  more 
definitely  what  is  required  by  the  obligation  of  veracity 
in  several  different  directions,  and  with  regard  to  some 
admitted  perplexities  of  conduct. 

The  duty  of  truthfulness  in  the  general  affairs  aud  re- 
lations of  men  goes  without  question.  The  duty,  for  in- 
stance, of  truthfulness  in  work  will  not  be  denied,  however 
much  it  ma}^  be  forgotten.  Sham  work  is  not  only  per- 
sonal negligence,  but  a  social  offence.  Truthfulness  is 
required  in  the  arm  of  the  day  laborer,  the  hand  of  the 
mechanic,  the  finger  of  the  artist,  the  pen  of  the  capitalist, 
the  brain  of  the  thinker,  and  in  the  very  imagination  of  the 
poet.  An  offence  against  the  social  order  of  life  is  commit- 
ted by  adulterations  of  food,  in  substitutions  of  cotton  for 
wool,  and  of  glue  for  honest  nails,  in  varnishing  old  mate- 
rials over  into  new,  and  by  watering  stocks,  as  well  as  when 
combinations  of  colors  which  nature  would  not  tolerate,  are 
sold  as  works  of  art,  and  sentiments  with  which  real  life 
is  not  spiced  are  served  up  in  novels,  not  to  mention  the 
multitudinous  humbugs  which  the  love  of  vanity  and  the 
greed  of  gain  are  now  prolific  in  begetting ;  —  these  all  are 
violations  of  the  first  principles  of  social  order,  and  would 
be  enough,  if  not  checked  and  constantly  beaten  back  by 
a  public  sense  of  truth  and  righteousness,  to  overwhelm  a 
country  in  its  own  falsehoods  and  to  turn  a  great  city  into 
an  abomination  of  desolation.  An  urgent  ethical  need  of 
the  times  is  a  revival  of  truthfulness  amid  all  handicrafts. 
The  work  of  society  calls  for  severe  truthfulness,  the  truth- 


390  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

fulness  not  of  men-pleasers,  but  of  honest  workmen  who 
labor,  as  Milton  wrote, 

"As  ever  in  my  great  Taskmaster's  eye  "  ; 

the  truthfulness  of  men  who  go  to  the  work  of  their  lives 
with  something  of  the  religious  awe  which  actuated  the 
cathedral  builders  in  Avhat  we  are  pleased  to  call  the  dark 
ages,  who  carved  with  careful  truth  the  farthest  statues 
on  the  highest  pinnacles  of  Gothic  cathedrals,  and  were  as 
painstaking  in  the  tracery  of  leaf  and  flower  along  the 
upper  and  scarce  visible  arches  and  lines  of  their  great 
forests  in  stone,  as  they  were  in  the  ornamentation  of  the 
arches  beneath  which  the  coming  generations  were  to  pass. 
Civilization  needs  salvation  from  sham  work,  sham  thought, 
sham  service,  sham  study,  sham  literature,  sham  ortho- 
doxy. Exaggerations  of  expression  and  undue  superla- 
tives of  speech  may  fall  under  the  condemnation  of  simple 
and  severe  truthfulness.  The  choice  words  of  the  English 
tongue  were  not  made  for  common  use  on  all  possible  occa- 
sions. Language  has  its  sacred  vessels.  It  is  profanation 
of  speech  to  use  them  for  unworthy  things.  These  exag- 
gerations may  be  trivial  faults  ;  but  the  habit  of  superla- 
tive speech  on  the  slightest  occasion  is  essentially  profane, 
and,  if  indulged  in  persistently,  it  will  show  in  time  evil 
reactions  on  the  sincere  strength  of  the  character. 

There  are,  however,  some  other  instances  of  apparent 
social  untruthfulness  which  do  not  fall  so  readily  under 
condemnation;  they  retain,  at' least,  against  the  .exhorta- 
tions of  the  rigorous  moralists  a  certain  good  standing  in 
society.  An  instance  of  these  apparently  harmless  devia- 
tions from  exact  and  scrupulous  truthfulness  is  furnished 
by  the  fleeting  fictions  which  the  merry  heart  delights  to 
weave.  There  is  a  natural  and  not  unhealthy  play  of 
fancy  which  often  seems  to  give  spice  to  conversation  and 
to  lend  variety  to  life.  Yet  in  this  fancifulness  of  mirth 
there  is  usually  no  real  deception  either  intended  or  con- 
veyed. But  wit  reaches  its  limit  of  pleasing  license  Avhen- 
ever  it  becomes  really  untruthful, — whenever  it  points  a 
falsehood,  or  wrongs  the  reality  of  friendship.     In  the  use 


DUTIES   TOWARDS   OTHERS   AS   MORAL   ENDS         391 

of  a  quick  fancy  or  a  sharp  wit  the  temptation  is  to  be 
guarded  against  of  a  real  falsification  of  things.  Wit  may 
bubble  up  and  sparkle  as  the  jets  of  a  fountain  in  the  sun- 
shine ;  but  we  must  keep  our  wit  pure  from  the  falsehood 
which  might  destroy  the  freshness  of  social  intercourse, 
and  prove  fatal  to  the  joy  of  friendship. 

What  shall  be  said  of  the  ordinary  fictions  of  polite 
society  ?  The  language  of  courtesy  is  full  of  phrases 
which  are  meant  to  veil  the  exact  truth.  Goethe  once  said 
of  his  countrymen,  "  Tlie  German  lies,  so  soon  as  he  be- 
comes polite."  Sometimes  positive  untruth  may  be  inten- 
tionally hidden  beneath  these  current  phrases  of  polite- 
ness. Ordinarily,  however,  like  paper  money,  though 
worthless  in  themselves,  they  have  value  in  the  general 
social  credit  and  responsibility  which  they  represent.  So 
far  as  such  phrases  are  convenient  as  the  small  change  of 
social  intercourse,  which,  were  it  necessary,  should  any 
real  occasion  arise,  might  be  redeemed  in  the  real  service 
and  helpfulness  for  which  these  light  passing  words  of 
politeness  stand,  they  cannot  be  regarded  as  counterfeits 
of  the  inward  truth  of  human  hearts.  A  certain  human 
sense,  as  St.  Augustine  allows,  seems  to  give  worth  to 
these  polite  fictions  of  speech.  Without  the  language  of 
courtesy  society  would  be  like  a  vast  factory  without 
lubricating  oil,  —  a  perpetual  rattle  with  increasing  fric- 
tion, and  perhaps  in  the  elid,  without  these  necessary  drops 
of  social  oil  here  and  there,  everything  human  might  be 
brought  to  a  standstill. 

Inward  truthfulness  would  seem  accordingly  to  permit 
many  words  of  politeness  and  humanity  to  come  to  the 
lips  as  habitual  expressions  of  one's  deepest  and  always 
intended  regard  for  others,  even  although  at  times  the  tide 
of  good  feeling  and  sympathy  may  by  no  means  be  on  the 
flood.  The  lips  remain  true  to  the  deeper  purpose  and 
willed  character  of  the  man,  while  they  refuse  to  reflect 
his  passing  mood  and  superficial  feeling.  The  words  are 
steadfastly  kept  true  to  our  settled  ideas  of  the  relations 
we  should  and  will  sustain  to  all  men,  even  to  some  whose 
presence  may  perhaps  be  felt  as  an  interruption  and  a  bore. 


892  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

Much  polite  manner  and  speech  is  a  praiseworthy,  though 
often  too  heartless  endeayor  to  carry  out  in  society  the 
golden  rule.  And  the  practice  with  sincere  intention  of 
these  forms  of  golden  speech  may  prove  a  refinement  of 
the  spirit  as  well  as  of  the  manners. 

But  when  these  pleasant  forms  of  courteous  language  are 
worn  as  a  cloak  by  a  repulsive  inward  selfishness,  as  one 
would  put  on  a  garment,  to  be  thrown  aside  when  there  is 
no  more  occasion  for  their  use,  then  they  become  a  means 
of  deception  which  is  evil  and  only  evil ;  such  false  use  of 
these  phrases  of  politeness  will  speedily  avenge  itself  in 
rendering  the  heart  still  more  incapable  of  sincere  friend- 
ship and  genuine  enjoyment  of  life.  And  an  ill-bred  heart 
cannot  long  be  hidden  beneath  any  of  these  pleasing  fash- 
ions of  speech. 

(3)  We  reach  now,  however,  some  cases  of  conscience 
under  the  law  of  veracity  Avhich  are  not  so  plain,  and  to 
resolve  which  we  need  to  consider  more  carefully  to  whom 
the  obligation  of  truthfulness  is  due.  These  cases  of  con- 
science arise  from  the  so-called  lies  of  necessity.  Some 
moralists  in  their  supreme  regard  for  truth  will  not  admit 
that  under  any  conceivable  circumstances  a  lie  can  be 
deemed  necessary,  not  even  to  save  life  or  to  prevent  a 
murderer  from  accomplishing  his  fiendish  purpose.  But 
the  sound  human  understanding,  in  spite  of  the  moralists, 
will  prevaricate,  and  often  with  great  vigor  and  success,  in 
such  cases.  Who  is  right,  —  Kant,  or  the  common  moral 
sense  ?  Which  should  be  followed,  —  the  philosophic  mo- 
rality, or  the  practice  of  otherwise  most  truthful  men  ? 

It  is  trifling  with  this  question  to  hold  that,  while  verac- 
ity is  the  only  admissible  law  of  speech,  certain  seemingly 
necessary  transgressions  of  this  law  may  be  pardoned  as 
venial  faults.  Either  a  falsehood  under  such  circumstances 
is  wrong,  or  it  is  right ;  either  it  should  not  be  in  any  wise 
permitted,  or  it  should  be  justified  with  a  good  conscience. 
St.  Augustine,  arguing  with  St.  Jerome  concerning  Paul's 
rebuke  of  Peter's  dissembling,  remarked:  *' Unless  perad- 
venture  you  are  able  to  give  us  rules  when  a  man  should 
lie  and  when  he  should  not"  ;  which  he  politely  requests 


DUTIES   TOWARDS   OTHERS   AS   MORAL   ENDS         393 

St.  Jerome  to  do  "without  doubtful  or  deceptive  reasons, 
if  it  can  be  done."  ^  In  this  St.  Augustine  betrays  a  health- 
ful moral  instinct.  If  we  cannot  tell  a  falsehood  with  a 
clear  conscience,  if  we  cannot  "lie  by  rule,"  it  would  be 
far  better  never  to  speak  an  untruthful  word. 

In  a  perfect  world  of  perfect  health  no  occasion  for  this 
moral  question  concerning  exceptions  to  the  law  of  verac- 
ity would  arise.  Sinless  beings  would  need  nothing  but 
their  own  transparency  for  their  safety,  and  evasion  would 
never  be  thought  of  as  a  vital  necessity.  But  we  live  in  a 
world  which  is  not  yet  made  perfect,  and  where  nature 
itself  abounds  in  colors  of  mimicr}'-  and  uses  arts  of  con- 
cealment for  the  preservation  of  life.  Our  social  obliga- 
tions are  the  duties  of  men  and  women  under  the  conditions 
of  this  present  world.  Some  of  these  necessary  conditions 
of  life  seem  at  times  to  require  deception  as  the  only  avail- 
able weapon  of  self-preservation,  —  which  is  a  primary 
duty,  —  or  as  the  only  possible  means  for  the  immediate 
protection,  which  love  may  require,  of  another's  life.  Is 
deception  under  such  conditions  ever  justifiable  ? 

It  may  be  answered  in  part  that  a  wdse  foresight  will 
avoid  to  a  great  degree  the  circumstances  which  might 
seem  to  render  some  deception  necessary.  Regard  for  the 
supreme  obligation  of  truth  will  require  watchfulness,  and 
alert  understanding  of  the  circumstances  of  daih^  life,  in 
order  that  this  apparent  collision  of  different  moral  claims 
may  be  avoided.  The  so-called  necessary  lies  are  often 
necessities  only  to  the  improvident  and  the  weak,  and  con- 
sequently their  chief  moral  offence  antedates  the  deception 
and  is  to  be  charged  rather  to  some  previous  moral  shift- 
lessness.  Many  complications,  from  which  it  seems  diffi- 
cult for  a  man  to  extricate  himself  with  truthfulness,  might 
be  avoided  by  a  little  forethought,  and  it  is  our  fault  if  we 
find  ourselves  caught  in  them.  If  such  be  the  case,  it  may 
prove  a  useful  discipline  for  us  to  refuse  the  means  of  es- 
cape by  the  least  deception  from  a  situation  whose  conse- 
quences we  choose  to  endure  as  a  just  chastisement  of  our 
improvidence.     But  considerations  like  these  furnish  only 

1  Epis.  ad  Hieron.,  5, 


394  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

a  preliminary  caution,  not  a  full  answer  to  such  cases  of 
conscience. 

In  attempting  to  give  ethical  reasons  in  justification  of 
the  natural  moral  instinct  which  leads  men  to  permit  the 
lies  of  necessity,  moralists  have  themselves  sometimes 
entered  on  very  doubtful  ground.  Some  have  observed 
that  malice  is  a  constituent  element  of  a  lie ;  and  conse- 
quently they  have  held  that  deception  witliout  any  poison 
of  malice  in  it  is  not  necessarily  harmful,  and  in  some 
supposed  instances  may  even  be  deemed  salutary.  The 
hurt  of  falsehood,  they  urge,  consists  not  simply  in  speak- 
ing an  untruth,  but  in  speaking  an  untruth  in  a  loveless 
spirit;  the  falsehood  is  not  merely  a  deception,  but  a  harm- 
ful deception.  Literal  or  outward  truthfulness,  it  has  been 
suggested,  should  not  be  absolutely  demanded  against  the 
dictates  of  inward  truthfulness,  the  truthfulness  of  a  loving 
spirit.  For  example,  if  you  can  save  a  life  by  a  falsehood, 
fidelity,  it  is  said,  may  require  of  you  that  deception. 

On  strictly  utilitarian  grounds  we  might  make  easier 
work  with  these  cases  of  conscience  than  we  may  in  view  of 
transcendental  principles  of  morals.  For  while  the  social 
good  requires  truthfulness  in  general,  a  law  of  social  utili- 
ties may  admit  of  exceptions;  and  the  common  obligation 
of  truthfulness,  therefore,  according  to  utilitarian  ethics, 
may  be  conceived  to  be  modified  or  suspended  in  cases 
where  the  social  consequences  of  truth-speaking  are  clearly 
seen  to  be  disastrous,  or  where  the  social  Avelfare,  as  judged 
by  the  average  experience  of  men,  plainly  requires  the  use 
of  some  deception.^ 

On  either  of  these  grounds  the  venture  of  untruthfulness 
is  hazardous.  The  former  view,  while  touching  on  a  real 
distinction  between  the  inward  truthfulness  of  love  and 
the  outward  expression  of  it  as  circumstances  may  permit, 
nevertheless  introduces  a  principle  of  discrimination  often 
too  fine  for  practical  uses,  and  it  is  perilously  subjective  in 
its   determination  of  duty.     The  other  utilitarian  method 

1  So  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen,  with  consistent  utilitarianism,  writes :  "  Exceptions 
are  recognised,  and  these  exceptions  still  obey  the  general  rule  of  conformity 
to  the  conditions  of  social  welfare."  —  Science  of  Ethics,  p.  207. 


DUTIES   TOWARDS    OTHERS    AS    MORAL   ENDS         395 

seems  almost  too  easy  a  solution  of  any  moral  problem  for 
a  conscience  that  is  profoundly  impressed  with  the  abso- 
lute transcendental  value  of  the  moral  law. 

All  justifiable  exceptions  to  general  moral  command- 
ments, we  hold,  should  themselves  proceed  from  fixed 
moral  principles.  In  order  that  we  may  discover  what,  if 
any,  principle  warrants  these  exceptions  to  the  command- 
ment of  veracity,  let  us  put  the  matter  before  us  in  a  single 
concrete  case.  We  take  the  classic  instance,  to  which 
writers  on  morals  have  often  referred,  of  the  Roman  matron 
whose  husband  and  two  sons  lay  sick  at  the  same  time. 
Just  at  the  crisis  of  the  father's  disease  one  of  the  sons 
died.  The  father  asked  after  the  health  of  the  boy.  The 
Roman  mother  restrained  her  tears,  and  went  with  a  cheer- 
ful air  to  the  sick-bed  of  her  husband.  To  his  inquiry 
after  his  son  she  answered,  "  He  is  better  "  ;  and  hastened 
away  to  conceal  her  sorrow.  From  that  moment  the  father 
began  to  recover.  Was  the  woman  right  or  wrong  in  that 
falsehood  ? 

We  answer  without  hesitation  that  she  was  right  in  fol- 
lowing under  those  circumstances  the  instinct  of  her  love, 
because  in  the  conditions  then  existing  she  owed  to  her 
husband  the  utmost  she  could  do  for  his  recovery ;  but  in 
his  weakness,  which  would  have  rendered  him  incapable  of 
receiving  the  truth,  she  did  not  owe  to  him  immediately 
the  duty  of  speaking  the  truth.  Let  us  look  carefully, 
however,  at  the  principle  involved  in  this  answer.  It  is  a 
simple  principle,  yet  a  far-reaching  one.  The  rule  for  all 
these  cases  of  conscience  may  be  stated  thus :  speaking 
the  truth  is  an  obligation  w^hich  we  owe  to  all  other  ra- 
tional creatures ;  it  is  a  social  duty ;  but  evidently  it  can- 
not be  owed  whenever,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  no 
claims  can  be  made  upon  us  for  the  truth.  Neither  is  it 
owed  when  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  those  claims  have  been 
morally  forfeited,  or  temporarily  lost.  But  this  forfeiture 
of  claims  upon  our  truthfulness  needs  to  be  determined 
with  sound  ethical  judgment,  and  not  at  our  convenience, 
or  by  our  supposed  self-interest.  The  law  is ;  we  are 
under  obligation  to  give  the  truth,  and  no  falsehood,  to  all 


396  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

who  have  claims  to  know  the  truth  from  us.  But  in  this 
statement  of  the  h\w  of  truth-speaking  the  moral  limita- 
tion of  the  obligation  is  also  included.  It  is  to  be  found 
in  the  nature  and  extent  of  the  human  right  to  the  truth. 
,A11  men  as  members  of  human  society  have  certain  general 
claims  upon  one  another  for  the  truth.  Do  any  men,  or 
men  under  any  special  circumstances,  lose  that  social  right 
and  cease  to  have  immediate  claim  upon  others  for  the 
truth?     This  is  the  moral  core  of  the  question. 

To  approach  this  claim  to  the  truth  from  an  obvious  ex- 
treme, we  may  say  that  animals,  strictly  speaking,  can 
have  no  immediate  rights  to  our  words  of  truth,  since 
the}^  belong  below  the  line  of  existence  which  marks  the 
beginning  of  any  functions  of  speech.  They  may  have 
direct  claims  upon  our  humanity,  and  so  indirectly  put  us 
under  obligations  to  give  them  straightforward  and  fair 
treatment;  truthfulness  to  the  domestic  animal,  to  the 
horse  or  the  dog,  is  to  be  included  as  a  part  of  our  general 
obligation  of  kindness  to  creatures  that  are  entirely  depen- 
dent upon  our  fidelity  to  them  and  their  wants. 

Thus  it  is  not  a  sin  against  truth  to  drive  horses  with  blinders,  although 
it  may  be  a  foolish  thing  so  to  train  them  ;  neither  is  it  untruthfulness  on 
our  part  to  catch  trout  with  artificial  flies,  although  it  may  be  against  the 
ethics  of  true  sportsmanship  to  kill  more  fish  than  one  needs. 

For  a  similar  reason,  whenever  it  can  be  held,  without 
sophistry,  or  inward  jugglery  with  ourselves,  that  a  human 
being  has  put  himself  beyond  the  pale  of  human  society 
and  its  general  obligations,  —  whether  he  has  fallen  below 
the  line  of  human  capability  through  some  disease  which 
has  temporarily  rendered  him  delirious,  or  made  him  too 
weak  to  receive  the  truth  which  otherwise  would  be  his 
due,  or  whether  he  has  dehumanized  himself  by  some 
criminal  intent,  and  has  cast  himself  out  beyond  imme- 
diate claim  to  an}^  human  consideration  except  justice;  — 
then,  in  such  cases,  the  law  of  truth-speaking  finds  its 
legitimate  and  necessary  limitation  in  such  forfeiture  of 
the  right  to  the  truth,  and  consequently  our  obligation  to 
speak  it  ceases.  Our  conduct  in  such  instances  is  morally 
to  be  determined  by  the  expediencies  of  love.     The  moral 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    OTHERS    AS    MORAL    ENDS  397 

principle  involved  might  be  formulated  in  these  words :  in 
proportion  as  from  any  cause  a  person  approaches  the  line 
beneath  which,  or  beyond  which,  no  just  right,  or  human 
claim,  exists  for  the  truth,  in  that  proportion  our  obliga- 
tion of  speaking  the  truth  draws  near  its  ethical  limit,  and 
other  moral  considerations  rise  to  assert  themselves. 

This  social  law  of  truth,  and  its  inherent  principle  of 
limitation,  may  be  followed  in  all  these  cases  of  conscience. 
When  nations,  for  example,  are  at  war,  all  rights  except 
those  humanities  generally  recognized  in  the  ethics  of  war- 
fare, are  for  the  time  held  in  abeyance.  If  the  war  is 
justifiable,  the  ethics  of  warfare  come  at  once  into  play. 
It  would  be  absurd  to  say  that  it  is  right  to  kill  an  en- 
emy, but  not  right  to  deceive  him.  Falsehood,  it  may  be 
admitted,  as  military  strategy,  is  justifiable,  if  the  war  is 
righteous. 

An  officer  in  our  civil  war  was  once  taken  captive  during  a  confused 
fight  in  a  piece  of  woods.  The  lines  on  both  sides  had  become  very  much 
entangled  during  the  engagement.  The  squad  of  Confederates  into  whose 
hands  the  officer  had  fallen  were  separated  from  their  command,  and  did 
not  know  in  which  direction  through  the  thick  underbrush  they  should 
seek  for  their  own  lines.  The  Union  officer  overheard  them  saying  to  one 
another,  "Ask  that  Yankee  ;  he  will  lie,  and  we  will  go  in  the  opposite 
direction."  So  he  told  them  the  truth,  and  by  means  of  the  truth  which 
he  knew  would  be  received  as  a  falsehood  by  his  captors,  he  deceived 
them,  leading  them  straight  into  his  own  command,  and  they  became  his 
prisoners.  Should  he  have  told  them  a  falsehood  for  the  sake  of  giving 
them  the  truth  ?  His  right  to  fight  with  his  tongue  was  as  valid  as  his 
right  to  draw  his  sword  ;  neither  can  be  justified  except  on  the  principle 
that  in  war  the  common  social  obligations  between  man  and  man  are  for 
good  reasons  temporarily  set  aside. 

Suppose,  as  another  instance,  that  a  tramp  bent  on  mis- 
chief stands  before  a  woman  in  the  door  of  her  home.  The 
law  would  justify  her  in  the  use  of  any  necessary  means 
of  self-defence.  She  has  wit  enough  to  defend  herself  by 
a  word.  She  calls  her  husband,  who  is  absent,  as  though 
he  were  in  the  next  room.  She  practises  some  successful 
deceit  which  she  is  quick  enough  to  invent,  and  frightens 
the  tramp  away.  Her  justification  for  the  successful  false- 
hood is  given  in  the  threatening  relation  to  her  which  has 
been   assumed  by  the  man  bent  on  mischief  who  stands  at 


398  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

her  door,  or  the  thief  who  looks  into  her  window.  He  has 
forfeited  by  his  criminal  intent  all  claim  to  any  human 
consideration  except  justice.  He  stands  no  longer  within 
the  pale  of  mutual  social  obligations ;  he  is  no  better  than 
a  dangerous  beast,  or  a  madman  who  must  be  restrained.^ 

Not  only  in  some  cases  of  necessity  is  falsehood  permis- 
sible, but  Ave  may  recognize  a  positive  obligation  of  love  to 
the  concealment  of  the  truth.  Other  duties,  which  under 
such  circumstances  have  become  paramount,  may  require 
the  preservation  of  one's  own  or  another's  life  through  a 
falsehood.  Not  only  ought  one  not  to  tell  the  truth  under 
the  supposed  conditions,  but,  if  the  principle  assumed  be 
sound,  a  good  conscience  may  proceed  to  enforce  a  posi- 
tive oblicj-ation  of  untruthfulness.  For  the  reason  which 
under  any  circumstances  would  render  deception  permis- 
sible, must  be  an  affirmative  moral  principle,  and  not  a 
doubtful  negative  of  duty;  and  as  a  direct  justification  of 
deception  it  may  carry  in  it  a  positive  obligation  likewise 
to  the  course  which  it  renders  morally  allowable.  There 
are  occasions  when  the  interests  of  society  and  the  highest 
motives  of  Christian  love  may  render  it  much  more  prefer- 
able to  discharge  the  duty  of  self-defence  through  the 
humanity  of  a  successful  falsehood,  than  by  the  barbarity 
of  a  stunning  blow  or  a  pistol-shot.  General  benevolence 
demands  that  the  lesser  evil,  if  possible,  rather  than  the 
greater,  should  be  inflicted  on  another. 

The  physician  may  have  occasion  in  his  practice  to  apply 
this  ethical  principle  of  the  obligation,  under  certain  con- 
ditions, of  deception.  Generally  the  truth  will  best  serve 
his  art ;  confidence  does  good  like  a  medicine.     But  there 

1  Somewhat  in  the  same  way  Jeremy  Taylor  reduced  these  cases  to  their 
moral  principle:  "  If  a  lie  be  unjust,  it  can  never  become  lawful ;  but  if  it  can 
be  separate  from  injustice,  then  it  may  be  innocent.  This  right  (to  truth), 
though  it  be  regularly  and  commonly  belonging  to  all  men,  yet  it  may  be  taken 
away  by  a  superior  right  supervening;  or  it  may  be  lost,  or  it  may  be  hindered, 
or  it  may  cease  upon  a  greater  reason."  A  lie  to  children  or  madmen  "  must 
be  such  as  is  for  their  good.  .  .  .  Though  they  have  no  right  to  truth,  yet  they 
have  right  to  defence  and  immunity."  (Durtor  Dvhitavtiiim,  B.  iii.  ch.  ii,  5, 
H,  8).  This  is  in  the  main  sound,  l)ut  the  ground  of  the  right  to  the  truth  needs 
to  be  more  carefully  discriminated  in  order  that  its  possible  forfeiture  may  be 
ethically  admitted.  The  ultimate  ground  of  this,  as  of  other  social  obligations, 
lies  in  our  common  humanness  as  children  of  the  one  God. 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    OTHERS    AS   MORAL   ENDS  399 

are  crises  of  disease  Avhen  to  tell  at  once  the  whole  truth 
might  prove  the  sure  defeat  of  the  physician's  skill;  in 
such  emergencies  it  may  not  merely  be  permitted  him  to 
conceal  his  superior  knowledge  and  to  prevaricate  if  neces- 
sary ;  it  may  become  also  his  duty,  in  fulfilment  of  the 
work  for  which  he  has  been  summoned,  to  deceive  ;  for  the 
patient  has  been  committed  to  his  hands  with  a  certain 
relinquishment  of  rights  which  otherwise  he  might  main- 
tain ;  and  the  sick  man,  moreover,  from  the  relation  in 
which  he  has  been  put  to  his  physician,  acquires  a  right  to 
all  that  the  physician  can  possibly  do  for  his  recovery ;  the 
patient  has  claims  on  his  doctor  both  for  his  knowledge  in 
the  exercise  of  his  art,  and  for  his  concealment,  so  far  as 
may  be  necessary,  of  his  knowledge  from  him.  The  ethics 
of  the  medical  profession  rightly  includes  both  these  obli- 
gations. The  wise  physician  will  learn  from  experience 
how  best  to  apply  his  code  in  the  individual  instance. 
The  general  obligation  of  truth-speaking  is  held  by  the 
good  physician  to  be  paramount,  and  concealment  will  be 
deemed  justifiable  only  in  cases  where  it  is  clearly  indi- 
cated by  the  conditions  or  symptoms  of  the  patient,  as  a 
dangerous  drug  might  be  indicated ;  and  it  is  always  to  be 
remembered  that  on  the  whole  truth  affords  the  best 
regimen,  and  that  even  a  temporary  benefit  may  prove  too 
dear  a  cost  for  loss  of  confidence  in  a  physician's  word. 
Moreover,  in  extreme  and  hopeless  cases,  the  man  who  is 
sick  unto  death  may  by  the  very  desperaten ess  of  his  condi- 
tion reclaim  his  right  to  know  the  truth  ;  and  deception, 
when  no  longer  to  be  practised  as  an  art  of  recovery,  might 
be  a  wrong  done  to  his  last  will  towards  others,  as  well  as 
to  the  health  of  his  soul.  Our  concealments  may  become 
impertinences  in  the  awe  of  the  presence  of  death. 

To  sum  up,  then,  what  has  been  said  concerning  the  so- 
called  lies  of  necessity,  the  principle  to  be  applied  with 
wisdom  is  simply  this :  give  the  truth  always  to  those  who 
in  the  bonds  of  humanity  have  right  to  the  truth ;  conceal 
it,  or  falsify  it,  only  when  it  is  unmistakably  evident  that 
the  hum.an  right  to  the  truth  from'  others  has  been  for- 
feited,  or   temporarily  is   held   in  abeyance   by  sickness, 


400  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

weakness,  or  some  criminal  intent:  do  not  in  any  case 
prevaricate,  unless  you  can  tell  the  necessary  falsehood  de- 
liberately and  positively,  from  principle,  with  a  good  con- 
science void  of  offence  toward  men,  and  sincere  in  the 
sight  of  God. 

(4)  While  admitting  these  moral  exceptions  to  the  gen- 
eral law  of  veracity.  Christian  ethics  will  lay  emphasis 
upon  the  positive  duties  which  are  required  of  men  by 
the  supreme  obligation  of  truthfulness.  Not  only  is  it 
a  duty  not  to  speak  falsely,  but  also  there  is  an  obligation 
to  be  recognized  of  giving  the  truth.  The  impartation 
of  truth  is  a  social  duty  under  the  commandment  of  benev- 
olence, and  is  particularly  enjoined  by  the  love  of  Christ. 
The  precept  of  the  apostle,  "  Speaking  truth  in  love,"  will 
govern  both  the  manner  and  the  contents  of  Christian 
conversation.  Love  should  give  form  and  temper  to  the 
word  of  truth.  God  in  nature  makes  sparing  use  of  his 
thunderbolts;  the  divine  way,  the  established  and  regular 
method  of  God's  action  in  making  the  earth  fruitful,  is  by 
shining  upon  it.  The  effective  way  of  speaking  the  truth 
is  that  indicated  by  jNIr.  Lowell's  lines  in  an  Unfinished 
Poem  : 

"  If  you  would  preach,  you  must 

Steep  all  your  truths  in  sunshine  would  you  have  them 

Pierce  the  crust." 

The  rude  frankness  and  harsh  plainness  of  speech,  by 
which  some  persons  are  accustomed  to  bruise  tenderer  sen- 
sibilities, is  never  the  mastery  of  love's  art  of  speaking  the 
truth.  An  occasional  friendly  use  of  truth,  as  a  crash 
towel,  may  be  wholesome ;  but  ordinarily  there  is  a  more 
excellent  way.  The  sincerity  of  love,  even  when  it  must 
open  wounds,  will  have  in  it  a  healing  virtue.  And  the 
truth  itself  when  spoken  with  hate  will  be  spoken  falsely ; 
for  there  is  nothing  in  the  world  falser  than  hate,  and  no 
heresy  can  be  more  contradictory  of  God  than  the  absence 
of  love  from  one's  creed.  Love  was  the  never-failing  and 
radiant  principle  of  the  daily  conversation  of  Jesus. 

This  positive  obligation  to  give  truth  in  love  is  a  law  of 
duty  to  the  teacher,  and  to  all  who  have  power  by  any 


DUTIES    TOWAIIDS    OTHEllS    AS    MORAL   ENDS         401 

means  to  cause  wisdom  to  be  heard  among  the  people.  It 
is  the  special  duty  to  which  the  clergy  are  ordained  ;  but  it 
is  no  less  the  obligation  of  the  whole  body  of  believers. 
Christian  charity  reaches  its  broadest  and  highest  obliga- 
tion in  the  missionary  obligation  to  preach  the  gospel  to 
every  creature.  The  duty  of  sharing  the  truth  and  giving 
the  truth  begins  at  home  and  extends  as  far  as  personal 
influence  may  reach,  or  wherever  others  may  be  sent  by  us 
as  bearers  of  the  truth  around  the  world.  In  Christian 
ethics  witnessing  to  the  truth  becomes  a  sacred  part  of  the 
obligation  which  the  Christian  man  owes  to  his  Master  and 
his  Lord. 

This  missionary  obligation  of  teaching  the  truth  does  not 
admit  of  any  Jesuitical  exceptions,  for  falsehood  within  the 
common  bonds  of  humanity  is  not  a  permissible  means  of 
doing  good.  Falsehood  can  never  be  morally  adopted  as  a 
method  of  doing  good,  because  (1)  on  the  lowest  ground 
of  expediency  it  is  a  means  of  doubtful  utility.^  (2)  It 
can  appeal  to  no  valid  ethical  principle  for  a  positive  sanc- 
tion. (3)  It  is  not  an  exception  which  would  prove  the 
general  social  law  of  truth-speaking,  but  on  the  contrary 
would  break  it  down.  (4)  Serving  God  with  a  lie  for 
mail's  sake  is  a  lack  of  faitli  in  divine  truth,  and  assumes 
an  unauthorized  responsibility  for  man's  good.  God  is  to 
be  served  as  well  as  Avorshipped  in  truth. 

The  pedagogic  principle,  however,  of  accommodation  to 
the  powers  of  the  pupil  differs  entirely  from  the  maxim 
that  the  end  justifies  the  means.  Accommodation  in  teach- 
ing means  simply  that  the  truth  is  to  be  given  so  far  as  the 
pupil  can  receive  it,  and  as  fast  as  he  is  able  to  understand 
it.  Accommodation  of  truth  to  receptive  capacity  is  a 
principle  of  limitation  in  giving  the  truth,  but  it  is  not 
a  rule  of  falsification.  The  law  of  pedagogic  accommoda- 
tion is  violated  when  it  is  made  a  justification  for  any  posi- 
tive deception.  A  progressive  revelation  of  truth  must 
necessarily  proceed  by  the  method  of  accommodation.  But 
partial  knowledge,  so  far  as  it  goes,  Avill  be  true  knowledge. 

1  At  this  point  John  Morley's  appeal  to  "  the  true  expediencies  "  against  the 
usefulness  of  error,  is  commendable.  —  On  Compromise,  pp.  43  seq. 


402  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

And  the  teaching  which  is  accommodated  to  a  low  degree 
of  receptive  capacity  will  itself  fit  and  stimulate  the  mind 
for  clearer  and  fuller  knowledge.  This  law  of  accommo- 
dation pervades  the  whole  history  of  God's  self-imparting 
love ;  and  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  how  a  Bible  could  be 
given  to  finite  and  sinful  men  in  any  other  way.  But  the 
divine  accommodation  of  truth  to  men  does  not  end  in 
a  bondage  in  error,  —  it  prepares  the  way  and  leads  men's 
minds  on  into  larger  revelations  of  the  truth.  By  the 
method  of  rightful  accommodation  in  teaching  errors  will 
not  be  fixed  and  confirmed,  but  caused  rather  to  fall  away, 
and  converted  into  the  soil  for  new  ideas  and  fresh  growths 
of  knowledge. 

There  is  a  constantly  recurring  temptation  to  a  false  use 
of  the  method  of  accommodation  in  the  training  of  children, 
and  even  in  the  work  of  moral  reform.  Yet  it  is  never  mor- 
ally justifiable  to  teach  a  falsehood  for  truth's  sake,  and  in 
the  long  run  such  methods  do  no  little  harm.  They  are 
hurtful  whether  in  the  home,  the  school,  or  the  church. 
While  the  truth  must  be  accommodated  to  the  mind  of  the 
child,  in  order  that  it  may  be  imparted  in  any  degree,  it 
may  be  so  accommodated  as  to  be  truth  in  the  child's 
apprehension  of  it,  and  thus  to  prepare  the  way  for*  his 
ready  acceptance  of  more  truth.  If  this  is  not  accom- 
plished, the  teaching  is  bad  as  teaching,  besides  being  false 
as  ethics.  No  little  effort  and  care  indeed,  on  the  part  of 
parent  and  teacher,  will  be  needed  in  order  to  give  partial 
truth  truthfully  to  the  child ;  but  the  endeavor  will  find  its 
reward  in  the  child's  growth  in  knowledge.  And  any  false 
impression  carelessly  left  in  the  minds  of  children  will  only 
retard  their  intellectual  progress,  and  impair  their  power  of 
knowing  the  truth. 

There  is  occasion  also  for  urging  that  the  ethics  of  re- 
form demands  the  use  of  the  truth  and  nothing  but  the 
truth.  Reforms  themselves  need  reformation  Avlien  they 
slip  into  the  ways  of  political  guile.  Not  with  such  weapons 
is  any  true  interest  of  humanity  to  be  served.  Much  mod- 
ern literature  of  reform  needs  to  be  passed  through  the 
flame  of  refining  truth.     The  first  ethical  duty  of  the  re- 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    OTHERS    AS   MORAL   ENDS         403 

former  is  to  be  sure  of  his  facts.  We  hasten  no  good  cause 
by  yoking  sound  truth  with  specious  falsehood.  It  is 
better  to  go  slower  with  the  truth  than  to  ride  with  the 
wind  of  a  passing  error. 

Instances  of  this  unethical  method  of  reform  are  not  far  to. seek.  A 
chemist,  for  example,  who  has  made  much  scientific  investigation  of  the 
subject  of  foods,  has  called  my  attention  to  unscientific  statements  con- 
cerning alcohol  in  some  temperance  text-books.  Frequent  instances  also 
of  over-anxious  zeal  may  be  observed  in  the  uncritical  use  of  Scriptural 
texts  in  Sunday-school  lessons.  But  nothing  can  be  more  dangerous  to 
faith  than  to  teach  children  views  of  the  Bible  which,  when  they  grow 
older,  they  may  learn  were  worthless.  The  very  best  results  of  scholar- 
ship in  all  departments  need  to  be  accommodated  to  the  minds  of  children. 

3.    The  Obligation  of  Honorableness. 

Another  quality  of  character  in  which  the  excellency  of 
love  will  be  manifested,  is  honorableness.  Honor  is  not 
one  of  the  simple,  primary  virtues,  but  rather  is  it  to  be  re- 
garded as  a  composite  virtue.  As  the  strength  of  iron  re- 
ceives the  temper  of  steel,  so  manly  virtue  is  perfected  in 
the  fineness  and  brio-htness  of  honor.  We  are  accustomed 
to  think  of  honor  as  a  romantic  virtue,  redolent  with  mem- 
ories of  chivalry,  —  the  daring  and  the  pride  of  men  whose 
rights  hung  on  their  lances  and  whose  laws  were  made  by 
their  sw^ords.  Yet  the  manner  in  which  the  Bible  insists 
on  the  honor  of  Jehovah  as  the  splendor  of  his  glory, 
might  lead  us  to  think  that  there  may  still  be  a  sceptre 
and  a  throne  for  honor  in  the  Christian  hierarchy  of  the  vir- 
tues. Divesting  the  word  of  fantastic  coloring,  and  free- 
ing it  from  romantic  associations  with  chivalrous  times 
which  are  past  and  gone  forever,  we  find  in  honorableness 
a  moral  quality  which  was  never  more  necessary  to  true 
manliness,  and  the  loss  of  which  in  a  commercial  atmos- 
phere would  be  disastrous  to  our  whole  spiritual  inheri- 
tance. 

It  is  not  easy  to  define  in  what  lies  the  secret  and  the 
charm  of  this  virtue  of  honor  ;  it  may,  however,  be  analyzed 
into  several  constituent  elements  of  its  grace.  It  springs 
from  a  high  regard  for  the  worth  of  one's  own  spiritual 
being,  together  with  a  sincere  respect  for  the  sacredness  of 


404  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

the  persons  of  others.  One  essential  element  of  it  is  true 
self-respect,  —  a  profound  regard  for  one's  spiritual  worth 
as  a  man  made  in  the  image  of  God  and  born  for  a  noble 
immortality.  This  kind  of  humble  yet  exalted  self-respect, 
which  is  necessary  to  a  high  sense  of  honor,  is  peculiarly 
Christian;  and  hence  it  was  no  accident  that  chivalric 
honor  was  a  fruit  of  Christian  and  not  classic  history. 
The  Christian  doctrine  of  sin  and  redemption,  while  it 
humbles,  exalts  human  nature  ;  the  highest  regard  for  the 
fair  honor  of  the  soul  springs  from  Christian  penitence,  as 
the  mountain  rises  from  the  deepest  valley  into  the  glory 
of  the  cloud.  Even  the  body  becomes  sacred  to  the  Chris- 
tian as  a  temple  of  the  Spirit.  He  cannot  dishonor  it,  or 
suffer  it  to  become  dishonored  in  any  lust  of  the  flesh. 
The  true  knight  seeks  through  life  the  Holy  Grail.  The 
sense  of  honor  involves  also  a  fine  perception  of  what 
under  all  circumstances  and  conditions  is  due  to  others. 
Genuine  self-respect  carries  with  it  as  high  a  regard  for 
the  worth  of  others.  Honor  will  show  its  inward  strength 
by  a  firm  respect  also  for  the  rights,  the  claims,  the  feelings 
of  others,  even  the  least  of  one's  fellow-men.  "  See  that  ye 
despise  not  one  of  these  little  ones,"  ^  is  the  Christian  com- 
mandment of  honor ;  and  the  lesson  of  courtesy  and  true 
gentility  of  conduct  has  been  left  for  us  in  those  words  of 
the  gospel,  which  are  unsurpassed  in  all  the  poetry  of 
chivalry,  concerning  the  gift  of  a  cup  of  cold  water  only 
to  the  least  of  the  disciples.  The  precepts  of  the  New 
Testament  concerning  the  duties  of  the  several  callings  of 
life,  of  masters  and  servants,  of  parents  and  children,  of 
husbands  and  wives,  of  the  different  orders,  gifts,  and  min- 
istries in  the  church,  as  well  as  the  example  of  Jesus  in 
the  perfect  honorableness  of  his  daily  intercourse  with  all 
classes  and  conditions  of  men,  show  what  this  thorough 
and  fine  honorableness  of  the  Christian  in  every  relation  of 
life  should  be. 

Another  virtuous  element  indispensable  to  the  honorable 
man  is  valor,  —  that  courage  which  Plato  called  the  love 
of  the  morally  beautiful  more  than  life.     We  rightly  asso- 

1  Matt,  xviii.  10. 


DUTIES   TOWARDS    OTHERS   AS    MORAL   ENDS         405 

ciate  honor  with  the  knightly  spirit,  for  the  honorable  man 
must  be  brave.  He  who  follows  only  the  safe  maxims  of 
prudential  wisdom,  and  never  could  leap  to  the  front  of 
human  conflict  in  quick  response  to  the  call  of  some  great 
duty,  may  die  respected  and  in  peace,  but  he  will  not  win 
this  consummate  virtue,  he  will  never  be  the  soul  of  noble- 
ness and  honor,  wliom  men  will  follow  and  women  love. 
Courage  to  think  and  to  speak  the  true  thing,  without 
counting  the  cost,  belongs  to  the  veiy  breath  of  honor. 
Without  this  pure  valor  of  spirit  no  manhood  shall  be 
made  perfect. 

In  all  these  respects,  and  in  the  highest  degree,  the  life 
of  Jesus  presents  the  example  of  honorableness.  He  never 
touched  another's  life  with  rude  hand,  and  no  man  was  so 
humble  as  not  to  receive  from  him  princely  greeting. 
Never  was  there  chivalrous  devotion  among  all  the  knights 
of  the  Cross  to  be  compared  with  the  Master's  brave  obedi- 
ence unto  death.  Jesus  Christ  possessed  the  loftiest  valor. 
He  loved  with  supreme  love  the  morally  beautiful  more 
than  life.  The  Christ  never  was  afraid.  Of  all  men  he 
alone  knew  no  fear. 

In  memory  of  the  strong  and  brave  Son  of  God,  who 
gave  noble  greeting  to  all  men  whom  he  met,  and  did  no 
soul  wrong  by  slightest  word  or  act,  and  who  went  down 
unfearing  to  liis  death  for  the  world.  Christian  ethics  must 
enthrone,  and  sanctify,  and  bless  the  honor  of  a  man's 
spirit ;  it  bids  us  cherish  and  revere  pure  and  lofty  hon- 
orableness of  character  as  the  perfection  of  Christian  grace. 

11.    DUTIES   IX  THE    SPECIAL  SPHERES  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE 

§    1.  —  DUTIES    IN    THE    FAMILY 

As  the  Christian  famil}^  is  hallowed  by  the  spirit  of 
Christianity,  and  marriage  held  sacred  by  the  Church,  two 
ethical  truths  are  combined  in  it,  neither  of  which  can  be 
ignored  or  impaired  without  peril  to  the  integrity  of  the 
home.  The  first  is  the  objective  worth  of  the  family  as 
the  unitary  social  group ;  it  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  de- 


406  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

pendent  for  its  origin  or  its  maintenance  on  mere  individ- 
ual caprice  or  feeling.  The  other  truth  is  the  subjective 
sacredness  of  marriage  as  an  act  of  individual  choice  and 
a  free  moral  union  of  two  persons  in  one  life.  These 
truths  have  not  always  been  conjoined  in  the  history  of 
the  family,  nor  do  they  appear  historically  to  have  been 
developed  simultaneously;  but  each  is  necessary  to  the 
full  etliical  value  of  marriage,  and  both  need  to  be  guarded 
from  tendencies  of  literature,  or  desires  of  life,  which 
would  exao-o-erate  and  even  sacrifice  the  one  at  the  cost 
of  the  other. 

The  individual  clioice  and  freedom  in  a  true  marriage,  was  the  later  of 
these  two  fundamental  ethical  conditions  of  the  family  to  come  to  full 
recognition.  In  the  Old  Testament  this  personal  element  of  love  lies 
mostly  in  the  background,  as  the  truth  of  individualism  in  general  waited 
for  complete  recognition  in  the  life  and  teaching  of  Christ.  And  the  sub- 
jective feeling,  the  individual  romanticism  of  love,  did  not  distinguish  the 
early  as  it  does  the  later  Christian  literature.  Passionate  devotion  to  the 
individual  object  of  affection  characterized  the  age  of  chivalry  ;  in  the  Prot- 
estant reformation,  however,  the  objective  and  sacred  worth  of  marriage 
as  a  divine  institution  was  brought  to  clear  recognition,  while  the  more 
personal  aspect  of  the  marriage  covenant  was  not  passionately  emphasized. 
Among  the  reformers  wives  were  found  by  the  advice  of  their  friends,  — 
happily  so  for  Melanchthon  and  Calvin  ;  this  likewise,  as  we  learn  from 
Isaac  Walton's  lives,  was  the  method  of  finding  a  suitable  companion 
which  was  adopted  to  his  cost  by  the  judicious  Hooker.  On  the  other 
hand  the  literature  of  romanticism  has  dwelt  upon  the  attraction  of  beauty, 
and  intensified  the  feeling  and  passion  of  individualism. 

There  is  always  danger  that  the  objective  truth  and 
worth  of  things  human  may  be  lost  in  the  flood  of  personal 
feelings ;  and  the  modern  domestic  novel  in  its  intense 
representation  of  personal  love  often  plays  fast  and  loose 
with  marriage  as  an  objective  institution  in  the  sacredness 
and  perpetuity  of  Avhich  the  whole  welfare  of  society  is 
bound  up. 

The  objective  value  of  the  family  is  not  only  the  Chris- 
tian doctrine  of  it  on  which  the  Church  insists  with  severe 
moral  earnestness,  and  wliich  the  State  should  uphold  by 
its  marriage  laws,  but  it  is  also  a  fundamental  social  truth, 
which  is  attested  and  confirmed  by  physiological  science 
and   by  the   inductions    of   sociology.     The   facts    of  he- 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    OTHERS    AS    MORAL   ENDS  407 

redity  justify  the  State  in  forbidding  marriages  which 
threaten  to  become  sources  of  disease  and  crime,  for  the 
social  welfare  is  so  involved  in  the  formation  of  the  family 
that  the  State  has  the  right  to  protect  itself  against  any 
harm  which  may  arise  from  a  marriage  against  the  laws  of 
nature  or  the  deductions  of  social  science.  This  riofht  of 
the  State,  it  is  true,  must  be  exercised  with  great  caution, 
and  can  be  wisely  embodied  only  in  general  laws  for  the 
restraint  or  prevention  of  socially  unwholesome  and  im- 
provident marriages ;  for  interference  with  individual 
choice,  even  though  socially  justifiable  on  general  princi- 
ples, if  carried  too  far  might  only  serve  to  increase  illicit 
alliances,  in  which  case  the  remedy  would  drive  the  disease 
still  deeper  in,  and  serve  only  to  aggravate  the  evil.  We 
may  look,  however,  to  the  social  sciences  for  needed  aid  in 
the  improvement  of  the  marriage  laws  of  Christian  society. 
In  these  days  it  seems  hardly  necessary  to  urge  the  other 
ethical  truth  of  marriage,  —  its  dependence  for  its  moral 
value  and  spiritual  blessing  on  intelligent  personal  choice. 
Marriage  is  a  union  for  the  highest  ends  of  being,  and 
therefore  requires  as  the  condition  of  its  beatitude  of  tlie 
Spirit,  not  merely  impulses  of  admiration  and  attraction  of 
fancy,  but  deeper  intellectual  sympathies,  and  moral  fitness. 
Both  husband  and  wife,  in  the  true  realization  of  married 
felicity,  are  neither  of  them  means  merely  of  life  and  hap- 
piness to  the  other,  but  each  exists  as  a  moral  end  for ,  the 
other,  so  that  each  is  to  seek  and  to  find  life  in  the  good  of 
the  other ;  it  is,  consequently,  a  first  condition  for  the 
attainment  of  this  idea  of  marriage  that  both  husband  and 
wife  should  be  capable  of  cherishing  with  sincere  and  thor- 
ough sympathy  kindred  feelings,  views,  and  desires  con- 
cerning the  chief  aims  of  human  life  and  the  objects  for 
which  they  themselves  should  live  and  strive  together  with 
one  mind  and  heart.  Hence  the  higliest  unity  of  married 
life  is  to  be  found  in  oneness  in  the  ideals  of  life.  Married 
life  reaches  towards  its  supreme  perfection  when  one  Chris- 
tian faith  and  hope  become  the  spirit  and  the  law  of  a 
human  home.  The  injunction  of  the  apostle  that  Chris- 
tians should  not  be  unequally  yoked  together  with  unbe- 


408  CHIIISTIAN    ETHICS 

lievers,  still  has  ethical  force  so  far  as  any  inequality  of 
aim  and  hope  might  serve  to  impair  the  unity  of  married 
love.  Certainly  two  ideals  of  life,  the  one  pure  and 
noble,  the  other  worldly  and  ignoble,  cannot  well  be 
mated  in  the  same  home.  Participation  in  one  Christian 
ideal  of  life  may  make  of  marriage  a  communion  in  the 
Holy  Ghost. 

As  marriage  is  an  objective  institution,  having  value  for 
society  as  well  as  worth  for  the  individual,  it  creates  a  cer- 
tain obligation  for  individuals  to  enter  into  it.  Because  of 
•its  objective  social  worth  marriage  is  not  to  be  considered 
simply  as  a  relation  which  may  be  permitted  those  who 
choose  to  take  on  themselves  its  vows ;  to  marry  is  one  of 
the  general  social  obligations  which  rests  upon  all  men. 
The  law  of  social  welfare  is  marriage  ;  every  one,  therefore, 
ought  to  get  married  unless  he  can  show  good  reason  to 
the  contrary. 

Such  reasons  may  be  found  in  circumstances  which 
render  the  establishment  of  a  home  impossible,  or  in  some 
failure  through  individual  misfortune  of  the  subjective 
conditions  necessary  to  the  formation  of  a  true  marriage ; 
or  in  the  intervention  of  other  moral  claims  which  leave 
no  question  concerning  the  single  and  supreme  duty  of 
a  man's  or  a  woman's  life.  Tendencies  to  disease,  or  un- 
fortunate physical  conditions,  may  render  marriage  inad- 
visable, and  excuse  love  itself  from  assuming  its  obligation. 
Any  fashion,  however,  or  social  tendency  is  to  be  deplored 
which  increases  the  conventional  obstacles  to  marriage,  and 
which  thereby  prevents  unions  that  with  less  artificiality 
of  manners  might  prove  happy  marriages  for  the  young 
men  and  women  who  would  enter  into  them.  One  of 
the  social  evils  of  the  reign  of  plutocracy  is  the  artificial 
elevation,  and  real  moral  degradation,  of  the  ideas  en- 
tertained in  society  concerning  what  constitutes  a  good 
marriage. 

The  objective  and  subjective  ethics  of  marriage,  which 
we  have  just  pointed  out,  determine  the  right  manner  of 
its  solemnization.  As  it  is  subjectively  an  act  of  free 
choice,  its  solemnization  can  be  permitted  only  with  the 


DUTIES   TOWARDS    OTHERS   AS    MORAL   ENDS         409 

full  consent  of  both  persons  who  appear  to  enter  into  its 
solemn  obligation.  Because  it  is  also  objectively  a  social 
institution,  having  value  for  the  social  whole,  the  State 
should  take  legal  charge  and  cognizance  of  its  institution 
and  continuance.  It  would  be  a  menace  to  the  social 
order,  should  marriage  be  permitted  as  a  private,  unauthor- 
ized, and  unwitnessed  consent  of  a  man  and  woman  to  live 
together  as  husband  and  wife. 

The  religious  solemnization  of  marriage  is  commended 
by  the  fact  that  it  is  a  social  act  and  covenant  honorably  to 
be  acknowledged  before  the  Father  of  spirits,  in  whom 
every  family  in  heaven  and  on  earth  is  named.^  The  re- 
ligious consecration  of  marriage  will  spring  from  a  deep 
and  sacred  sentiment  among  those  who  have  been  trained 
in  Christian  homes  to  seek  in  all  things  for  the  blessing 
of  God.  Even  the  thoughtless  and  the  worldly  can 
hardly  help  feeling  the  religious  solemnity  of  the  wed- 
ding hour.  Christian  men  and  women  will  not  think  of 
entering  on  the  supreme  felicity  of  their  earthly  existence, 
of  beginning  a  new  life  of  twain  made  one,  without  ap- 
pearing before  their  God,  and  in  His  invisible  but  felt 
presence  taking  the  vows  of  the  holiest  of  human  cove- 
nants upon  them. 

The  Church  in  a  free  State  cannot  insist  on  the  right  to 
be  represented  at  every  wedding,  and  it  must  admit  the 
validity  of  civil  marriages.  But  Christian  ethics  will  re- 
gard marriage  as  much  more  than  a  civil  compact ;  it  is  a 
spiritual  union ;  if  in  no  merely  churchly  sense,  yet  in  a 
real  consecration,  it  is  a  sacrament  of  life,  the  most  sacred 
covenant  of  earth,  symbolic  of  the  spiritual  communion  of 
heaven.2  The  deepest  ethical  sense  of  responsibility 
should  blend  with  an  exalted  religious  feeling  as  its  solemn 
vows  are  assumed,  and  the  self-consecration  of  husband  and 
wife  to  each  other  should  be  made  in  the  fear  of  God,  and 
with  grateful  prayer  to  Him  who  is  love,  and  who  has 
given  us  these  human  hearts  with  which  to  love. 

Since  marriage  is  an  ethical  bond  of  union,  it  is  possible 
that  it  may  be  broken  by  sin.     As  death  may  dissolve  the 

1  Eph.  iii.  15.  2  Eph.  v.  30. 


410  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

earthly  and  physical  relationship,  so  sin  may  cut  asunder 
the  moral  and  spiritual  union  between  husband  and  wife. 
In  an  imperfect  moral  world,  under  conditions  of  sore 
temptation,  it  is  impossible  to  pronounce  the  marriage  re- 
lation to  be  absolutely  indissoluble.  Human  and  divine 
law  alike  admit  therefore  the  possibility  of  divorce.  The 
important  question  is,  what  sin  may  be  regarded  as  suf- 
ficient to  warrant  the  State  in  annulling  the  marriage  con- 
tract, or  justify  the  Christian  man  or  woman  in  seeking  to 
be  freed  from  its  bonds  ? 

As  marriage  is  a  social  compact  to  be  formed  under  the 
sanctions  of  law,  it  is  admitted  that  it  cannot  terminate 
except  with  the  consent  of  the  social  whole  of  us  accord- 
ing to  some  legal  judgment.  If  we  reason  simply  from 
the  ethical  nature  of  the  marriage  obligation  without  ref- 
erence to  the  distinctive  teachings  of  Christianity  as  de- 
termined primarily  by  the  words  of  Christ  concerning 
divorce,  the  moral  principle  for  the  legal  termination  of 
marriag-e  will  not  be  difficult  to  find.     Whatever  sin  de- 

o 

stroys  either  the  essential,  physical  basis  or  the  ethical 
integrity  of  the  marriage  relation,  may  offer  a  cause  for 
divorce  which  the  State  may  properly  bring  to  the  consid- 
eration of  its  courts.  A  sin  which  is  less  than  that  in  its 
aim  and  consequence,  should  not  be  alleged  as  a  sufficient 
legal  ground  for  divorce.  This  general  principle  follows 
directly  from  the  moral  nature  of  the  marriage  covenant. 
It  should  be  legally  declared  void  only  when  by  a  course 
of  sin  it  has  been  already  actually  destroyed ;  the  law  may 
recognize  and  determine  the  fact  of  a  broken  marriage 
relation ;  it  cannot  itself  break  it.  The  bond  is  morally 
sundered  by  such  crime,  and  by  such  crime  only,  as  renders 
it  impossible  for  one  party  or  the  other  to  keep  its  obliga- 
tion without  sinning  either  against  the  first  obligation  of 
nature  to  self-preservation,  or  against  the  marriage  cove- 
nant itself.  Adultery  is  thus  a  universally  recognized 
ground  of  absolute  divorce  because  it  is  an  act  of  unfaith- 
fulness to  the  marriage  vow  by  which  the  one  false  to  it 
breaks  it  asunder;  and  because  also  for  the  other  person 
continuance  in  marriage  with  an  adulterer  would  render 


DUTIES   TOWARDS    OTHERS   AS   MORAL   ENDS  411 

the  innocent  a  party  to  the  offence,  —  a  thkcl  consenting 
party  in  a  triple  rehationship,  which,  if  knowingly  con- 
tinued, would  thereby  become  for  all  concerned  a  guilty 
partnership  in  crime.  While  possibly  in  rare  cases  love 
may  be  justified  in  condoning  a  past  offence  which  has  been 
sincerely  repented  of,  no  one  can  keep  on  living  in  the 
married  relationship  with  one  practising  adultery,  without 
entering  indirectly  indeed,  but  as  a  consenting  participant, 
into  the  sin  against  the  integrity  of  the  home.^  Are  there 
other,  lesser  sins  against  the  home,  which  amount  to  such 
an  ethical  destruction  of  marriage  as  to  justify  its  legal 
dissolution  because  rendering  continuance  in  it  by  the  in- 
jured party  itself  a  species  of  adultery,  —  a  married  life, 
that  is,  utterly  despoiled  of  those  ethical  contents  which 
are  necessary  in  order  to  make  marriage  honorable  and  the 
bed  undefiled?  The  Roman  Church,  taking  its  stand  on 
the  letter  of  the  commandment  of  Christ,  and  asserting 
matrimony  to  be  a  sacrament  of  the  Church,  will  allow  no 
other  cause  for  absolute  divorce.  Protestants  have  been 
much  divided,  hoAA^ever,  concerning  this  subject.  Apart 
from  purely  Scriptural  grounds  it  is  urged  that  divorces 
may  properly  be  granted  when  marriage  is  ended  by  deser- 
tion, or  the  home  destroyed  by  habitual  intemperance,  or 
the  fulfilment  of  the  nuptial  vow  made  forever  impossible 
by  a  crime  for  which  the  husband  or  wife  is  sentenced  for 
life  to  state  prison.  It  is  further  urged  that  it  would  be 
imposing  a  great  and  unnecessary  hardship  upon  the  inno- 
cent to  compel  either  person  to  bear  for  life  the  conse- 
quences of  such  heinous  sins  by  the  other ;  that  after  due 
process  of  law  re-marriage  should  be  permitted,  and  that 
no  moral  interest  of  society  would  suffer  in  consequence. 
All,  it  is  said,  which  the  State  can  properly  be  asked  to 
do,  is  to  protect  the  sanctity  of  the  marriage-tie  against 
lawless  individualism ;  and  at  the  same  time  to  affirm  the 
worth  of  the  family  to  society  by  placing  such  restraints 
around  the  entrance  into  matrimony,  and  such  compulsions 
against  voluntary  exits  from  it,  as  experience  may  show  to 

1  Jeremy  Taylor  has  considered  at  length  this  point ;  seeDuctor  Diibitantium, 
pp.  144  sq. 


412  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

he  wise  in  view  of  what  it  is  possible  to  accomplish  through 
law  for  the  general  good. 

If  we  turn  to  the  teaching  of  the  New  Testament,  it 
would  seem  at  first  glance  as  though  no  other  ground  for 
absolute  divorce  could  be  permitted  than  the  single  one  of 
adultery.  That  is  tlie  only  cause  mentioned  in  the  words 
of  Christ  to  the  Pharisees.^  Before  we  settle,  however,  in 
this  conclusion,  the  inquiry  should  be  carefully  made 
whether  this  precept  was  intended  as  a  universal  com- 
mandment under  all  conditions  of  society  and  for  all 
times.  Is  it  an  absolute  maxim  of  Christian  morals  from 
which  there  can  be  no  permissible  deviation  ? 

On  the  one  hand,  a  strict  exegesis  of  the  Scriptural  pas- 
sages in  which  Jesus  speaks  of  putting  away  a  wife,  seems 
to  admit  of  no  other  construction  than  that  adultery  was 
the  only  sufficient  cause  which  our  Lord  had  in  mind  when 
he  was  laying  down  the  law  of  divorce  to  the  Jews.  If  we 
take  the  letter  of  the  Scripture  as  a  universal  categorical 
imperative,  the  question  must  be  deemed  to  be  closed. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  appears  that  the  apostolic 
Church  did  not  so  understand  the  teaching  of  Christ ;  for 
St.  Paul  seems  to  admit  that  divorce  may  be  justifiable 
on  another  ground,  that  of  desertion.  If  an  unbelieving 
husband  should  abandon  a  Christian  wife,  she  would  no 
longer  be  held  in  bondage  in  such  a  case.^  The  letter  of  the 
injunction  of  Jesus  can  therefore  be  urged  as  applicable  to 
all  social  conditions  only  by  questioning  the  correctness  of 
the  apparent  direction  which  Paul  gave  to  a  church  in  a 
place  where  the  social  relations  of  Christians  were  some- 
what different  from  those  obtaining  in  Judea  when  Jesus 
laid  down  the  law  to  the  Pharisees.  The  difference  be- 
tween these  two  directions,  Jesus'  and  Paul's,  can  be  har- 
monized only  as  we  reconcile  many  other  discrepancies 
between  precepts  Avhich  we  find  in  Christ's  own  teaching ; 

1  Matt.  V.  32;  xix.  9;  Mark  x.  11,  12. 

2  1  Cor.  vii.  15.  For  the  exeg-esis  of  this  text  see  Meyer,  Co77i.  in  loco.  The 
natural  interpretation  is  that  the  person  from  whom  an  nnhelievins:  husband  or 
wife  has  departed,  is  not  subject  longer  to  the  obligation  of  a  relation  which  has 
actually  been  broken  by  desertion.  Whether  Paul  thought  that  the  i)ersou  so 
deserted  might  remarry,  he  has  not  told  us. 


DUTIES  TOWARDS   OTHERS   AS   MORAL  ENDS         413 

viz.  by  seeking  for  the  principle  of  universal  validity  from 
which  under  different  circumstances  dissimilar  moral  max- 
ims proceed.  The  principle  being  the  same,  its  applica- 
tions may  be  various,  and  at  times  apparently  contradictory. 
This  is  the  case  because  the  individual  instance  (to  recur 
to  Rothe's  expression)  varies.  Jesus  undoubtedly  laid 
down  an  absolute  ethical  principle  concerning  the  mar- 
riage relation  in  what  he  was  called  to  say  in  view  of  the 
loose  divorce  customs  of  the  Jews.  That  principle  from 
which  his  precept  proceeded,  should  be  law  in  Christian 
ethics.  Moreover,  the  particular  instance  which  was  the 
only  one  considered  in  Christ's  declaration  of  the  true  prin- 
ciple of  divorce,  required  the  simplest  and  most  unequivocal 
assertion  of  the  sanctity  of  the  obligation  of  marriage. 
For  adultery,  the  instance  considered,  is  the  direct  breach 
of  the  marriage  relation.  It  is  the  one  sin  which  imme- 
diately and  unmistakably  illustrates  the  only  valid  reason 
on  which  divorce,  according  to  Christ's  teaching,  may  be 
legally  allowed,  —  the  ground  that  the  union  between  hus- 
band and  wife  has  already  in  fact  been  criminally  de- 
stroyed. There  is  no  other  legitimate  principle  for  divorce 
than  that  presented  by  the  nature  of  the  sin  of  adultery. 
If,  however,  we  can  say  with  a  good  conscience  that  some 
other  sin  (some  sin  which  possibly  in  Christ's  day  had  not 
reached  its  full  measure  of  iniquity,  —  a  sin,  for  instance, 
like  drunkenness,  which  may  utterly  destroy  the  spiritual 
unity  of  a  home  and  threaten  even  the  physical  security  of 
one  of  the  persons  bound  by  the  vows  of  marriage)  is  the 
moral  equivalent  of  the  cause  which  our  Lord  had  imme- 
diately before  him  for  pronouncing  divorce,  shall  we  be 
justified  in  admitting  it  to  be  likewise  a  proper  Christian 
ground  of  divorce  ? 

Such  is  the  question  fairly  stated  upon  which  Christian 
moralists  have  not  been  entirely  agreed.  Our  answer  to  it 
will  depend  very  much  on  two  considerations.  The  first 
will  be  our  general  habit  of  reading  the  New  Testament  as 
another  law,  or  of  interpreting  its  precepts  to  the  best  of 
our  understanding  in  what  we  may  judge  to  have  been  the 
spirit  in  which  they  were  spoken,  remembering  the  Master's 


414  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

own  saying  tliat  his  words  are  spirit  and  they  are  life. 
The  other  consideration  will  be  our  conhdence  in  the  cor- 
rectness of  the  premise  that  the  special  sin  alleged,  by 
which  the  marriage  union  has  been  violr.ted,  is  the  full 
moral  equivalent  of  adultery.  In  proportion  as  we  are 
satislied  that  it  is  in  its  consequence  as  destructive  of  the 
possibility  of  moral  continuance  in  the  married  relation, 
we  shall  be  inclined  to  think  that  it  is  included  under  the 
supreme  principle  wh'ch  controlled  the  judgment  of  Jesus 
concerning  certain  habits,  at  which  Moses  winked,  of  the 
easy  putting  away  of  a  wife.  In  other  words,  we  shall 
argue  that  divorce  for  such  other  cause  justifies  itself  to 
the  Christian  conscience,  because  we  are  satisfied  that 
Jesus  himself,  if  he  were  present  and  speaking  to  the  men 
of  our  times  in  the  same  intent  and  spirit  in  which  he 
spoke  of  old,  would  pronounce  this  cause  to  be  as  heinous 
as  adultery  in  its  destruction  of  the  sacredness  of  the  mar- 
riage bond.^  The  validity  of  this  reasoning  will  become 
further  apparent  when  we  recall  the  consideration  already 
alluded  to,  that  there  are  conditions,  other  than  adultery, 
in  which  the  whole  ethical  and  spiritual  truth  of  marriage 
is  so  destroyed  that  for  the  innocent  person  to  continue  in 
the  married  state  would  be  abhorrent  to  all  pure  instincts, 
and  would  seem  itself  to  be  like  a  participation  in  an  adul- 
terous relation  .2 

The  limits  of  our  space  prevent  us  from  specifying  in  de- 
tail the  duties  which  the  different  members  of  the  family 
owe  to  each  other  within  its  happy  sphere.  There  are  no 
more  sacred  personal  obligations,  as  there  are  no  better  op- 
portunities for  the  practice  of  all  the  common  virtues,  than 
the  family  life  affords.  Selfishness  is  the  deadly  foe  of  the 
home.  Married  love  should  not  be  left  simply  to  the  care 
of  nature  as  a  feeling  of  attachment,  but  it  should  be  cher- 
ished and  cultivated  as  a  reasonable  virtue.     Mutual  for- 


1  Among  the  Puritans  Ames,  who  wrote  a  treatise  on  Conscience  (London, 
1643),  regarded  "an  obstinate  desertion,"  as  "  a  lair  cause"  lor  suffering 
divorce  (p.  20i)). 

2  Dorner  has  urged  tliis  consideration  in  justification  of  the  extension  of  the 
Christian  law  of  divorce,  System  der  Christ.  Sittenlehre,  s.  500. 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    OTHERS    AS   MORAL   ENDS         415 

bearaiice,  consideration,  and  honor  are  the  conditions  of  its 
happy  continuance. 

The  words  of  one  of  the  earlier  English  divines  concerning  mutual 
peace  between  man  and  wife  will  still  bear  quoting  :  "  We  heard  before 
that  man  to  his  wife,  and  she  to  him,  is  as  an  haven.  Now  by  experience 
we  find  that  if  the  haven  be  tempestuous  it  is  much  more  troublesome 
and  dangerous  to  the  mariner  than  the  wide  sea."  —  Wm.  Gouge,  0/ 
Domestical  Duties,  p.  135  (London,  1627). 

The  duties  of  parents  and  children,  of  brothers  and 
sisters,  a.^  well  as  of  masters  and  servants,  are  adaptations 
of  the  law  of  love  to  these  special  relations  and  intimacies, 
but  their  detailed  consideration  and  enforcement  fall  prop- 
erly to  homiletics  and  to  Christian  pedagogy. 

§    2. DUTIES    IN    THE    SPHERE    OF    THE    STATE 

From  the  moral  constitution  and  vocation  of  the  State, 
which  we  have  already  considered,  the  ethical  obligations 
of  civil  life  are  immediately  to  be  derived.  The  individual 
citizen  is  responsible,  to  the  extent  of  his  personal  power, 
for  the  fidelity  of  the  State  to  its  moral  law  and  mission. 

It  has  been  charged,  however,  upon  Christianity  as  a  de- 
fect, that  while  it  makes  its  adherents  citizens  of  heaven, 
it  has  not  been  directly  concerned  to  make  of  them  inter- 
ested citizens  of  this  world.  What,  then,  is  the  view  to  be 
taken  of  political  obligations  by  an  ethics  which  is  thor- 
oughly true  to  the  Spirit  of  Christ?  Is  there  a  sense  also 
of  political  obligation  in  the  Christian  consciousness  ? 

If  we  turn  to  the  New^  Testament,  it  is  plain  that  its 
political  ethics  were  comparatively  undeveloped.  Jesus 
avoided  conflict  with  the  Roman  authority,  and  drew  a 
clear  distinction  between  the  oblio-ations  of  the  reliofious 
and  the  civil  life.  Pie  was  obedient  in  both  spheres  of 
duty,  not  withholding  Avhat  was  due  to  Csesar  while  he 
rendered  unto  God  the  things  w^hich  are  God's.  Yet  his 
relation  to  the  ruling  powers  of  Judea  was  throughout  one 
of  passive  acquiescence  rather  than  of  active  participation 
in  the  troubled  politics  of  Judea.  Similarly  the  political 
ethics  of  the  epistles  are  developed  on  the  i)assive  rather 


416  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

than  on  the  active  side :  obedience  is  enjoined  to  the 
powers  that  be  as  ordained  of  God,  while  the  duty  of 
contending  for  human  rights,  or  of  seeing  that  justice  is 
done,  are  only  inferentially  to  be  drawn  from  the  New 
Testament.  Hence  writers  Avho  hastily  base  their  con- 
clusions on  tlie  letter  of  Scripture,  jump  at  the  conclusion 
that  there  is  no  political  morality  to  be  derived  from 
purely  Christian  sources,  and  that  the  whole  duty  of  man, 
according  to  Christianity,  is  concentrated  upon  interests  of 
the  other  world.  They  forget  that  the  entire  Old  Testa- 
ment ground,  on  which  Christianity  rests,  was  political 
history  —  the  historic  development  of  a  chosen  people; 
the  Hebrew  commonwealth  was  the  divine  preparation 
for  the  kingdom  of  the  Christ.  If  Jesus'  own  saying  is 
to  be  made  good  that  he  came  not  to  destroy  but  to  fulfil, 
the  political  truth  also  of  Israel  will  in  some  large  way 
be  taken  up  into  the  ethics  of  Christianity,  and  the  national 
consciousness  of  the  Hebrew  people  must  hnd  fulfilments 
among  the  modern  nations  in  the  spirit  of  Christianity. 

The  apparent  limitations  of  the  political  ethics  of  the 
New  Testament  w^ere  given  in  the  historic  conditions  of 
Jesus'  ministry,  and  determined  by  the  first  necessities 
of  the  work  of  Christ  wdiich  his  immediate  disciples  were 
called  to  continue  in  the  world.  The  gospel  for  all  na- 
tions was  to  be  preached  to  the  world  before  the  political 
institutions  of  an}^  single  nation  could  be  recast  in  the 
forms  of  Christianity.  Had  Jesus  devoted  himself  to  the 
removal  of  the  political  evils  of  Herod's  court;  had  he 
been  willing  to  enter  Jerusalem,  in  compliance  with  his 
disciples'  ambition,  as  the  leader  from  heaven  of  a  Gali- 
lean uprising ;  then  the  political  star  of  Israel  might  pos- 
sibly again  have  become  ascendant,  but  the  world  would 
not  have  seen  the  dawn  of  the  new  day  for  all  peoples 
and  lands.  The  political  duties  which  are  mentioned  inci- 
dentally in  the  gospels  and  epistles  are  precisely  those 
virtues  which  believers  at  that  time  needed  to  practise, 
if  their  world-conquering  faith  was  to  gain  opportunity 
to  plant  itself  and  to  grow  on  the  earth.  God  in  histoiy 
does  not  make  haste ;  the  political  ethics  which  are  inher- 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    OTHERS    AS    MORAL   ENDS  417 

ent  in  the  morality  of  the  gospel  were  left  latent  in  the 
early  Christian  teachings  until  their  hour  in  history  should 
come. 

The  question  fairly  stated  is  not  simply  what  political 
precepts  do  we  read  in  letters  of  apostles  which  were 
primarily  intended  to  meet  special  conditions  in  the  primi- 
tive churches ;  but  what,  according  to  the  spirit  of  Chris- 
tianit}',  and  in  the  matured  judgments  of  the  Christian 
consciousness  (correcting  itself  always  by  comparison  with 
the  word  of  God)  are  our  Christian  civil  duties  ?  ^ 

Civil  obligations  will  vary  in  form,  and  differ  in  extent, 
according  to  the  constitution  and  laws  of  different  coun- 
tries; but  certain  general  Christian  obligations  may  be 
recognized  under  all  forms  of  constitutional  government. 

1.  An  intelligent  interest  should  be  taken  in  public 
affairs.  Whatever  concerns  us  collectively  ought  to  in- 
terest us  individually.  Even  though  the  politics  of  a 
country  may  not  directly  affect  any  private  material  in- 
terest, yet  all  political  action  concerns  the  general  good, 
so  that  intelligent  watchfulness  of  the  administration  of 
government,  as  well  as  observation  of  the  tendencies  of 
civil  institutions,  is  one  part  of  the  moral  obligation  which 
each  of  us  owes  to  all  of  us. 

2.  It  is  a  duty  in  general  to  conform  to  existing  laws. 
There  are  certain  admissible  exceptions,  as  Avhen  a  law 
requires  some  personal  act  which  would  be  dishonorable, 
or  which  is  against  a  good  conscience.  Moreover,  under 
some  extenuating  circumstances  it  may  be  held  that  laws 
which  are  morally  indifferent,  which  are  merely  statutory 
prohibitions,  disregard  of  which  involves  in  itself  no  moral 
offence,  may,  for  a  sufficient  reason,  be  overlooked.  In 
such  cases  the  citizen  owes  indeed  a  respect  to  formal 
law  as  law.  But  if  he  regards  the  prohibition  as  unwise 
or  arbitrary,  he  may  elect  to  show  dissent  from  the  par- 
ticular statute  and  his  regard  for  law  in  general,  by  sub- 
mitting freely  to  the   penalty .^     He  may  thereby,   if  he 

1  It  would  be  easy  to  adduce  citations  from  the  apostolic  fathers  to  show 
that  Christianity  did  not  make  the  Christians  bad  citizens  even  of  the  Roman 
state  which  was  passing  away. 

••2  Cf.  Blackstoue,  Int.  §  2  [58]. 


418  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

thinks  best,  make  perhaps  most  effectively  his  individual 
protest  against  an  obnoxious  statute.  No  absolute  maxim 
of  conscience  can  be  laid  down  in  such  cases,  but  in  gen- 
eral the  presumption  is  on  the  side  of  respect  even  for 
needless  or  questionable  statutory  enactments.  A  cer- 
tain right,  however,  of  the  individual  must  be  admitted 
to  seek  for  the  abolition  or  correction  of  a  particular 
statute  in  matters  of  moral  indifference  by  disregarding 
it,  enduring  the  consequences,  and  thereby  endeavoring 
to  render  an  unwise  law  ridiculous  or  odious,  and  to  se- 
cure its  repeal. 

3.  Tlie  extent  to  which  personal  participation  in  politics 
becomes  an  obligation  to  be  recognized  as  belonging  to 
the  Christian's  duty  in  the  world,  must  be  determined 
under  his  general  Christian  obligation  to  enter  actively 
into  social  life  according  to  the  requirements  of  his  per- 
sonal position,  opportunities,  and  other  responsibilities. 
While  no  universal  maxim  may  be  laid  down,  certain 
Christian  considerations  should  be  emphasized.  The  Lord's 
prayer  for  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  requires  of  Christian 
men  active  interest  in  all  spheres  of  life,  and  along  all  pos- 
sible lines  of  effort  in  and  by  which  that  large  and  perfect 
human  good  which  is  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth,  may 
be  advanced.  The  Spirit  of  Christ  forbids  moral  indiffer- 
ence to  anything  human.  At  great  crises  in  a  nation's 
history,  when  all  the  powers  of  a  people  are  summoned  to 
meet  some  emergency  in  the  conflict  for  liberty  or  right- 
eousness, patriotism  may  become  for  the  hour  the  supreme 
Christian  obligation.  And  at  all  times,  in  a  free  country 
governed  by  the  people,  political  indifference  on  the  part 
of  the  educated,  or  the  more  morally  intelligent  members 
of  a  community,  is  a  source  of  danger  and  detriment  to  the 
nation.  The  worst  enemies  of  free  institutions  may  not 
be  the  corrupt,  or  the  insectivorous  politicians  who  swarm 
around  the  spoils  of  office,  but  rather  the  indifferent  good, 
who  do  not  care  what  happens  in  the  political  hive  so  long 
as  their  own  private  interests  are  not  disturbed. 

The  maintenance  of  a  vigilant,  intelligent  public  spirit  is 
one  of  the  first  of  our  political  obligations,  from  having 


DUTIES   TOWARDS    OTHERS    AS    MORAL    ENDS         419 

part  in  which  no  good  citizen  should  deem  himself  excused. 
The  limits  of  the  obligation  of  the  individual  in  this  duty 
are  to  be  found  only  in  the  limits  of  his  position,  oppor- 
tunity, and  power.  And  in  proportion  as  one  has  a  Chris- 
tian seuGe  of  human  life  as  a  whole,  all  the  parts  and 
activities  and  duties  of  which  are  mutually  related  and  in- 
ter-dependent, will  he  realize  his  obligation  of  discharging 
to  the  full  the  duties  of  good  citizenship,  of  forming  correct 
opinions  on  public  questions,  of  taking  a  position  in  ac- 
cordance with  his  best  political  judgment,  of  letting  his 
political  convictions  be  known  in  all  proper  ways,  of  exer- 
cising always  his  right  as  a  voter;  in  short,  of  counting 
according  to  his  full  measure  as  a  man  in  the  politics  of 
his  country. 

Professional  ethics  may  determine  the  manner  or  times 
in  which  different  individuals  may  take  part,  or  manifest 
their  convictions  in  political  affairs.  A  physician  might 
not  find  a  proper  arena  for  political  discussion  in  the  sick- 
room, or  the  clergyman,  except  under  circumstances  of  pe- 
culiar moral  gravity,  discuss  questions  of  party  politics  in 
the  pulpit;  but  no  profession,  and  least  of  all  the  profes- 
sion of  a  scholar  or  of  a  religious  teacher,  should  be  deemed 
so  sacred  as  to  take  a  man  out  of  the  general  interests 
of  humanity,  and  excuse  him  to  his  own  conscience,  or  in  the 
eyes  of  others,  from  the  obligations  which  rest  upon  him  as 
a  man  and  a  responsible  member  of  the  community.  Even 
if  the  duties  of  the  heavenly  citizenship  be  regarded  as  of 
a  superior  order  and  incomparably  above  any  claims  of  this 
present  system  of  the  world,  nevertheless  the  Scripture 
here  is  to  the  point,  that  he  that  is  faithful  in  that  which  is 
least  will  be  faithful  also  in  that  which  is  much ;  the 
future  interests  of  man  are  not  to  be  served  by  neglect  or 
contempt  of  any  of  his  present  obligations. 

4.  Special  obligations  rest  on  those  who  are  called  to 
bear  part  in  the  affairs  of  government  and  in  the  execution 
of  the  laws.  The  duties  of  the  law-maker,  the  judge,  the 
advocate,  the  officer  of  the  courts,  would  require  each  its 
chapter,  in  a  book  of  special  ethics,  for  their  full  statement. 
In  Christian  ethics  this  general  principle  should  be  brought 


420  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

to  clear  recognition :  in  all  these  special  relations  and 
activities  their  obligations  are  to  be  assumed  and  discharged 
in  the  Spirit  of  Christ. 

The  moral  obligations  of  politics  are  concentrated  in 
the  duty  which  is  owed  by  a  leader  of  public  opinion ;  and 
genuine  statesmanship  will  be  profoundly  ethical  in  its 
political  comprehension  and  fidelity.  The  true  statesman 
is  he  who  reasons  as  Mr.  Lowell  says  Dante's  opinions 
"were  reasoned  out  from  the  astronomic  laws  of  history 
and  ethics,  and  were  not  weather-guesses  snatched  in  a 
glance  at  the  doubtful  political  sky  of  the  hour. 

"  Swiftly  the  politic  goes  :  is  it  dark  ?  he  borrows  a  lantern  ; 
Slowly  the  statesman  and  sure,  guiding  his  feet  by  the  stars."  i 

The  instinct  to  discover  the  deeper  moral  involutions 
of  current  political  questions  is  a  power  of  great  ethical 
value.  It  is  a  faculty  of  politico-ethical  conscience  to  be 
cultivated  and  kept  clear  and  keen  through  exercise.  And 
it  is  never  wise  nor  safe  for  the  Christian  mind  to  give 
over  any  political  question  or  social  law  entirely  to  the 
conflict  of  party  interests ;  the  ethics  of  it,  the  ethical 
implications  and  possible  ethical  reactions  of  all  current 
questions  of  government  or  administration,  will  bear  con- 
stant watching.  These  moral  contents  of  proposed  policies 
and  laws  sometimes  lie  on  the  surface;  —  as  the  enactment 
of  a  law  of  international  copyright  in  the  United  States 
was  an  application  in  public  morality  of  the  commandment, 
"  Thou  shalt  not  steal."  Sometimes  these  moral  relations 
of  politics  lie  beneath  the  surface  of  legislation,  or  are 
remote  possibilities  of  the  policies  of  states.  It  is  a  fair 
question,  for  example,  from  the  ethical  point  of  view,  what 
are  the  moral  relations  of  a  system  of  tariff  legislation,  or  of 
law^s  relating  to  trusts,  or  of  different  charters  of  municipal 
corporations?  So  far  as  these  ethical  elements  of  political 
institutions,  or  laws,  can  be  distinguished  and  made  ap- 
parent, their  consideration  becomes  a  part  of  the  political 
obligation  of  the  Christian  man.  No  party  interest  should 
be  suffered  to  obscure  these  moral  relations  and  possible 

1  Works,  vol.  iv.  p.  179. 


DUTIES    TOWARDS   OTHERS   AS   MORAL   ENDS  421 

ethical  consequences  of  political  action.  Indeed,  to  rise 
above  the  immediate  claims  of  party  to  the  level  of  the 
moral  view  of  any  current  political  question,  may  at  times 
be  the  first  duty  of  the  Christian  man  to  the  State,  —  an 
obligation  of  the  higher  law  in  his  politics  which  he  is  to 
discharge  in  the  fear  of  God,  and  as  a  part  of  his  repetition 
of  the  Lord's  prayer.  Thy  Kingdom  come. 

§    3. DUTIES    IX    THE    CHURCH 

We  have  seen  tliat  the  Church  of  God  in  its  divine  idea 
and  intention  is  an  institute  of  religion  for  humanity. 
Ideally  the  Church  belongs  to  man.  The  obligation  of 
men  to  the  Church  follows  directly  from  its  nature  as  a 
universal  human  good.  Because  it  belongs  to  man,  men 
should  belong  to  it.  Theoretically  all  men  are  to  be  re- 
garded as  included  in  the  Church  of  God  for  humanity. 
Nor  can  any  individual  altogether  avoid  interest  and  par- 
ticipation in  the  Church  for  man,  wherever  it  exists  in  the 
name  of  Christ.  For  it  will  confer  certain  general  benefits 
on  him  through  its  presence  in  our  world,  whatever  may 
be  his  individual  position  towards  it.  The  Church  is  a 
good  for  all  men,  although  individually  they  may  not  have 
entered  into  free  and  conscious  participation  in  it.  What 
God  does,  he  does  for  all ;  his  sky  is  for  the  whole  world  ; 
his  redemption  is  a  redemption  for  the  human  race ;  his 
Church  extends  its  influence  around  the  whole  compass  of 
liiiman  activities,  and  sheds  light  and  love  on  some  who  do 
not  own  its  blessing.  Only  in  this  conception  of  the 
Church  as  belonging  in  Christ's  name  to  humanity,  can 
the  obligation  of  all  men  to  be  members  of  the  Church  be 
maintained.  Any  narrower  idea  of  the  Church  circum- 
scribes with  a  corresponding  limitation  the  duty  of  men  to 
be  found  within  the  Church.  Because  it  is  a  human  good, 
and  is  no  exclusive  privilege  of  an  elect  class,  its  gospel 
may  be  preached  throughout  the  whole  world,  and  its 
claims  pressed  on  all  men. 

In  no  narrower  conception  of  his  kingdom  than  this  did 
Jesus  meet  men  when  he  lived  on  earth.     Christ's  thousrht 


422  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

was  always  broader  than  his  disciples'  idea  of  the  kingdom 
of  God.  And  the  Spirit  of  Cliristianity  has  always  gone 
beyond  the  practice  of  the  Church.  All  who  are  heavy 
laden  are  called  by  Jesus,  and  every  man  who  wills,  is 
chosen.  Whoever  the  Lord  saw  gathering  with  him,  and 
not  scattering,  he  was  ready  to  own.  He  could  forgive 
with  a  noble  self-forgetfulness  any  word  spoken  against 
the  Son  of  man,  if  only  men  would  not  sin  against  the 
very  Spirit  of  Truth  and  Love,  for  only  such  sin  against 
the  Holy  Ghost  is  from  its  nature  hopeless.^  Moreover, 
Jesus  in  liis  approach  to  men  would  put  aside  all  limita- 
tion of  class  or  condition  and  speak  directly  to  the  human 
heart  and  conscience.  ThrouQ^h  the  voice  of  Jesus,  God 
spoke  to  the  man  in  men.  The  healing  touch  of  the  Christ 
is  for  the  human  nature  of  us  all.  Hence  all  men  sought 
for  him;  and,  when  the  Holy  Ghost  was  given  in  his  name, 
his  gospel  broke  loose  from  Judaic  bounds,  went  forth 
to  the  Gentiles,  found  a  home  in  many  cities,  and  was  to  be 
preached  among  all  the  nations.  The  Church  is  called  and 
should  be  inspired  to  represent  the  universality  of  its 
Christ.  It  can  regard  no  man  as  an  exception  from  its 
privilege  of  grace,  its  obligation  of  service.  It  stands  in 
the  midst  of  the  community  as  a  sign  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  for  all  passers  by.  It  invites  whoever  will  to  par- 
take of  God's  blessing.  No  one  by  birth  or  inheritance  is 
without  its  pale  of  salvation. 

1.  Theoretically,  therefore,  the  first  duty  which  Chris- 
tian ethics  urges  as  the  general  human  obligation  towards 
the  Church  is  this :  every  man  should  regard  himself,  by 
right  of  his  birth  into  a  world  Avhich  has  Christ  in  it,  as 
having  his  place  in  the  Church  of  Christ  for  humanity,  and 
as  under  obligation  to  make  good  in  his  personal  con- 
duct his  human  birthricrht  into  God's  kinofdom  for  men. 
When,  however,  this  duty  is  admitted  in  the  abstract, 
the  practical  discharge  of  it,  under  existing  conditions  of 
Christianity,  becomes  a  different  and  to  some  men  a  per- 
plexing question.  Tlie  hesitancy  of  many  intelligent  and 
honorable  men  in  confessing  themselves  to  be  members  of 

1  Matt.  xii.  31-32. 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    OTHERS    AS   MORAL   ENDS         423 

the  Church,  arises  from  several  causes.  It  is  true  that  the 
Church  does  not  in  any  existing  ecclesiastical  body  present 
itself  simply  as  the  general  religious  order  of  humanity,  or 
as  a  social  institution  of  religion  which  men  are  to  ac- 
knowledge as  representing  the  general  religious  nature 
and  needs  of  man.  In  other  words,  the  Church  does  not 
now  present  itself  to  men  on  the  religious  side  in  the  same 
manner  that  tlie  State  presents  itself  to  them  on  the  social 
side  as  the  form  of  organized  life  under  which  they  have 
been  born,  and  the  only  practicable  order  of  social  organi- 
zation in  which  their  lives  with  those  of  their  fellow-men 
may  be  cast.  The  Roman  religion  held  this  relation  to 
men,  and  all  Roman  citizens  were  members  of  the  Roman 
State-Church.  If  the  Christian  Church  simply  offered 
itself  as  the  best  practicable  method  for  the  organization  of 
the  social  religious  life  of  men,  there  would  be  little  dif- 
ficulty in  regarding  one's  self  as  having  birthright  in  it, 
and  living  in  general  conformity  to  its  order.  Tlie  obliga- 
tion to  the  Church  would  in  that  case  resolve  itself  into  a 
general  duty  of  living  in  harmony  with  the  prevailing  so- 
cial religious  order,  and  of  becoming  in  one's  conduct  more 
or  less  religiously  disposed. 

The  Christian  Church,  however,  wdiile  asserting  in  the 
name  of  the  Son  of  man  that  it  is  a  universal  human  order 
and  belongs  as  such  to  humanity,  proceeds  to  make  further 
and  specific  demands  both  upon  the  beliefs  and  the  char- 
acters of  individuals  whose  personal  allegiance  it  requires. 
It  does  not  offer  its  citizenship  simpl}^  as  a  Christian  birth- 
right, but  also  as  a  duty  to  be  assumed  with  a  personal 
faith  in  its  truth,  and  in  a  free  self-surrender  to  its  supreme 
law  of  life. 

The  obligation  of  men  to  the  Church  is  further  compli- 
cated by  the  division  of  Christendom  into  many  churches, 
each  making  its  particular  claims  of  authority,  or  asserting 
its  own  conditions  of  communion.  The  Church  speaks  not 
with  one  simple  and  clear  voice,  but  with  many  and  con- 
fused voices,  in  urging  its  obligations  upon  men.  There 
seems  to  be  no  exact  agreement  concerning  what  is  indis- 
pensable to  the  reception  of  the  sacraments,  and  to  personal 


424  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

•fellowship  in  the  communion  of  the  Church.  Matters 
which  are  deemed  of  essential  importance  by  one  body 
of  believers  are  ignored  by  others.  Some  insist  on  much 
belief,  others  reduce  the  Christian  creed  to  the  simplest 
elements  of  a  religious  faith.  Some  look  for  obvious  signs 
of  a  radical  change  of  character;  others  open  the  Christian 
home  to  all  who  show  any  desire  to  enter  in.  If  Ave  admit 
that  all  these  different  churches  belong  to  the  one  true 
Church,  men  may  ask  Avhether  membership  in  any  one  of 
these  imperfect  and  even  opposing  forms  of  Church  organ- 
ization, is  indispensable  to  belonging  in  the  spirit  to  the 
Church  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  —  whether  indeed  Jesus 
himself,  should  he  now  appear  on  the  earth  and  go  about 
doing  good  as  of  old,  would  be  careful  to  identify  himself 
closely  with  any  existing  ecclesiastical  organization  ?  Or 
would  he  enter  in  CA-ery  place  into  all  the  churches,  and 
confess  his  faith  in  his  Father  and  ours  Avherever  he  found 
men  breakino-  bread  in  his  name  ? 

o 

To  this  latter  part  of  the  perplexity  this  much  may  at 
once  be  said :  the  Church  of  Christ  is  in  its  integral  idea 
not  simply  a  spiritual  communion,  but  a  visible  showing 
of  the  Lord  Jesus  ulitil  he  comes  ;  therefore  the  Avhole 
duty  of  men  toAvards  the  Church  is  not  fulfilled  Avhen  they 
hold  themselves  apart  from  any  outAvard  and  evident  com- 
munion with  the  disciples,  and  seek  to  live  Christ's  life  in 
secret  fellowship  Avith  the  Spirit.  Grant  that  all  existing 
forms  of  ecclesiastical  organization  may  be  imperfect  and 
mixed  Avith  error;  still  the  Church  in  its  idea  is  not  simply 
spiritual  and  invisible,  but  it  is  to  have  the  Spirit  of  Christ 
in  some  embodiment ;  the  Church  is  the  body  of  Christ ; 
and  consequently  it  is  the  duty  of  believers  not  only  to 
pray  for  the  gifts  of  the  Spirit,  but  to  put  themselves 
in  the  appointed  channels  through  Avhich  spiritual  gifts 
descend  to  men,  —  to  be  not  only  spiritually  minded,  but 
to  be  members  in  particular  of  the  body  of  Christ.  Admit 
that  membership  in  some  visible  church  is  not  necessary 
to  salvation;  that  the  utmost  borders  of  the  Church  do 
not  reach  to  the  ends  of  the  divine  grace  and  include  the 
whole  compass  of  God's  redemption  of  men ;  still  a  religious 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    OTHERS   AS   MORAL   ENDS  425 

life  wliicli  is  not  brought  under  the  order  and  kept  in  the 
communion  of  some  church  is  like  a  nomadic  existence 
without  the  borders  of  organized  society.  Grant  that  one 
may  overleap  in  his  personal  devotion  all  walls  of  sect, 
and,  as  on  spiritual  wings,  might  fly  directly  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven ;  nevertheless,  each  church  is  an  open 
gate  through  which  men  may  enter  in  companies  into  the 
kingdom;  through  some  hospitable  door  we  may  come  in, 
and  we  should  dwell  with  other  children  of  God  in  the 
house  of  the  Lord. 

The  general  obligation  of  belonging  to  the  Church  of 
God  for  humanity  reduces  itself  accordingly  to  these 
narrower  and  more  definite  inquiries :  Is  there  any  open 
door  through  which  I  may  find  my  way  into  the  visible 
kingdom?  Are  all  wa3's  closed  to  one  of  my  beliefs  or 
purposes  ?  Through  what  particular  one  of  these  doors 
ought  I  to  find  my  wa}^  in?  Am  I  claiming  my  full 
Christian  birthright  of  humanity  unless  I  find,  or  insist 
on  having  opened  to  me,  some  Christian  communion? 
Such  obligation  of  the  individual  to  find  entrance  some- 
where into  Christ's  Church  carries  with  it  also  the  obliga- 
tion of  the  churches  to  meet  men  in  their  rights  to  the 
Church,  and  not  to  close  the  door  of  entrance  against  any 
whom  the  spirit  of  the  Christian  household  of  faith  should 
receive. 

Keeping  both  sides  of  this  obligation  in  mind,  the  human 
right  and  personal  duty  of  men  to  be  in  the  Church,  and 
also  the  obligation  of  the  Church  to  all  men,  we  turn  first 
to  the  New  Testament  for  further  lio-ht  with  regfard  to  the 
conditions,  if  any,  of  fellowship  with  Christ's  followers  in 
his  Church. 

The  two  requirements  which  Jesus  made  of  those  who 
would  be  his  disciples  are  expressed  in  these  words,  which 
usually  go  together  in  the  gospels.  Repent  and  believe. 
We  may  trust  our  Lord  to  have  put  into  his  repeated 
invitation  to  men  to  become  his  followers  all  that  is 
necessary  as  a  condition  of  companionship  with  him  in 
God's  way  of  life.  These  two  fundamental  words  have 
direct  reference  to  character.     For  to  repent  is  to  make 


426  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

thorough  moral  work  with  one's  self ;  and  to  believe,  in 
the  sense  which  this  word  bears  in  Christ's  use  of  it,  is  to 
trust  him  with  a  personal  devotion,  and  such  trust  is  a 
moral  attachment  of  a  man's  soul  to  the  Master.  A  sincere 
act  of  turning  from  sin  and  a  personal  attachment  to  him, 
were  thus  the  first  conditions  of  discipleship  which  our 
Lord  required. 

It  is  true  that  there  were  intellectual  apprehensions  of 
Christ  in  such  faith.  Something  from  the  intellect  must 
enter  into  any  disposition  of  the  heart.  No  ethical  choice 
can  be  made  without  some  exercise  of  the  reason;  —  this 
is  only  saying  that  the  will  was  not  made  to  act  in  an 
entire  intellectual  vacuum.  It  is  obvious  that  even  in  the 
simple  personal  requirements  which  Jesus  made  of  his 
disciples  there  were  involved  certain  intellectual  affirma- 
tions. Their  trust  implied  at  least  a  perception  of  the 
trustworthiness  of  the  Teacher  who  knew  the  Father  and 
was  sure  of  his  God.  Faith  in  Christ  springs  from  some 
conviction  of  his  worthiness  to  be  our  Master.  But  this 
simple  confession  of  personal  discipleship,  among  those  who 
followed  Jesus,  was  not  the  later  theology  of  the  Epistle 
to  the  Romans,  or  even  that  fuller  apprehension  of  the 
Christ  which  Peter  had  gained  when  he  went  forth  preach- 
ing the  gospel  of  the  risen  Lord.  From  this  original 
personal  trust  and  confidence  in  Jesus  as  Master  and  Lord, 
a  new  Christian  theology  was  sure  in  time  to  grow  in  the 
philosophic  atmosphere  of  Grecian  thought.  The  Nicene 
creed  is  a  rational  development  of  the  faith  of  the  apostolic 
Church  ;  but  the  Lord's  gracious  invitation  was  not  to  a 
confession  of  the  faith  of  the  one  Catholic  Church,  —  it 
was  spoken  to  the  hearts  of  men  in  these  simplest  words 
of  clear  moral  import.  Repent,  and,  Believe  me. 

Are  men  to  hold  themselves  aloof  from  Christ's  visible 
following  until  they  can  attain  a  more  definite  and  longer 
Christian  creed  than  the  first  disciples  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
found  sufficient  to  warrant  them  in  leaving  all  to  follow 
him  ?  Or  may  the  Church,  in  this  later  dispensation  of 
Christ's  spiritual  presence  and  teaching,  require  more  belief 
than  Jesus  asked  when  he  began  to  draw  all  men   unto 


DUTIES   TOWARDS    OTHERS    AS   MORAL   ENDS         427 

himself  ?  It  may  be  admitted  as  unquestionable  that  the 
Church  to  which  has  been  promised  the  gift  of  the  Spirit, 
ouo'ht  to  educate  men  into  clearer  and  fuller  beliefs  con- 
cerning  Christ's  person  and  work  than  the  Galilean  disci- 
ples at  first  could  have  gained.  It  ma}^  be  urged  that  a 
simple  creed  for  Christian  beginners  is  not  creed  enough 
for  Christian  men  of  mature  understanding  of  God's  Word. 
The  Church  may  meet  men  with  easiest  truths  of  divinity 
and  attract  them  to  itself  in  the  name  of  the  prophet  from 
Galilee  ;  but  the  men  whom  it  wins  to  Jesus,  it  should 
carry  on,  through  the  lessons  of  his  life  and  death,  to 
Pentecost  and  the  glorious  apostolic  doctrine  of  the  crucified 
and  risen  Lord. 

Admitting  this  educational  duty  of  the  Church  under  its 
guidance  by  the  Spirit  of  Truth,  still  it  is  not  easy  to  see 
why  the  Church  should  ask  more  of  men  in  the  Christian 
call  to  discipleship  than  Jesus  himself  sought,  when  he 
came  preaching  the  gospel  of  the  kingdom  of  God  and  say- 
ing. Repent  and  believe.  The  universal  intent  of  the 
Church  as  a  blessing  belonging  by  Heaven's  decree  to  all 
men,  should  serve  as  a  perpetual  injunction  upon  human 
devices  or  forms  which  narrow  or  limit  its  divine  design. 
When  we  look  solely  at  what  may  be  imposed  as  an  indis- 
pensable condition  of  fellowship  w^ith  Christ  in  the  visible 
Church,  we  may  not  go  one  step  beyond  the  Lord's  own 
requirements  of  discipleship. 

It  may  be  said,  however,  and  with  some  reasonableness, 
that  certain  conditions  of  communion  in  the  Church,  which 
are  not  deemed  essential,  may  be  added  for  the  sake  of 
order  and  harmony ;  and,  while  these  should  not  be  abso- 
lutely imposed,  believers  may  be  urged  freely  to  consent  to 
them.  So  almost  all  existing  churches  add  precepts  of 
ecclesiastical  order,  or  formulas  for  doctrinal  harmony  and 
soundness,  to  the  simplest  conditions  of  following  Christ. 
The  peril,  however,  of  excluding  some  whom  Christ  would 
own  by  restrictions  which  are  intended  to  make  the  fold 
safer  for  those  who  are  brought  into  it,  is  not  inconsider- 
able ;  it  may  be  a  great  danger  in  times  of  intellectual 
questioning.      Precedents  or  proprieties  of  ecclesiastical 


428  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

order,  and  expediencies  of  general  rules,  ought  not  to  be 
maintained  to  the  injury  of  an  individual's  right  to  the 
Church  of  Christ  in  some  company  of  disciples,  or  to  the 
exclusion  of  any  who  might  be  led  to  larger  and  more  pro- 
nounced Christian  life  by  a  return  of  the  whole  body  of 
believers  for  his  sake  to  the  simplicity  of  Christ.  It  should 
never  be  forgotten  in  the  administration  of  the  churches 
that  it  is  the  Church  of  the  Son  of  man,  and  not  ours,  nor 
our  fathers'  Church.  Moreover,  it  is  within  the  Church, 
and  not  without  it,  that  we  are  to  find  the  best  place  in  the 
world  to  study  all  truth,  to  work  out  our  doubts,  to  grow  in 
our  beliefs.  We  should  seek  to  bring  all  things  human  into 
the  Church  for  help  and  enlightenment,  and  to  exclude  only 
things  evil.  It  is  a  fatal  blunder  to  compel  any  doubter 
to  go  off  from  the  communion  of  the  Christ  in  search  of 
truth.  All  investigation  belongs  within  the  society  of  Him 
who  is  the  truth.  Galileo  with  his  telescope  has  as  divine 
right  in  the  Church  as  the  priest  with  his  missal.  Men 
should  be  invited  to  bring  their  questionings  to  the  light 
of  Christ ;  and  only  the  man  Avho  will  not  be  led  by  the 
Spirit  of  Truth  excludes  himself  necessarily  from  those 
who  are  called  by  Christ's  name. 

Such  being,  then,  the  general  obligation  on  the  side  of 
the  Church  to  keep  itself  open  to  all  men  who  will  come 
ethically  to  the  Christ  and  be  mastered  by  his  Spirit,  the 
duty  of  the  individual  towards  the  Church  will  be  cor- 
respondingly plain  and  direct. 

It  is  an  obligation  of  social  religion  resting,  as  we  have 
just  observed,  on  a  simple  condition  of  faith  and  character. 
And  this  kind  or  degree  of  character  and  faith  may  itself 
be  pressed  as  an  intellectual  and  moral  obligation.  It  is 
the  office  of  the  preaching  of  the  gospel  to  present  Christ 
as  our  Master  and  Lord.  It  is  the  duty  of  every  man  to 
examine  himself  and  to  see  whether  he  does  not  have,  or 
is  not  under  rational  obligation  to  gain  in  himself,  such  a 
beginning  of  Christian  trust  and  purpose  as  will  justify 
him  in  seeking  to  confess  it  in  the  fellowship  of  the  disci- 
ples, and,  because  so  justifying  him,  render  it  likewise  his 
first  social  religious   duty  to   confess  it.     He   should   be 


DUTIES   TOWARDS    OTHERS   AS    MORAL   ENDS         429 

avowedly  where  his  real  purpose  would  leave  him.  He 
should  appear  openly  in  the  communion  where  his  heart 
belongs. 

This  duty  can  be  fulfilled  only  in  an  act  of  religious 
decision.  But  the  decision  necessary  for  this  step  in 
uniting  with  Christ's  Church  is  not  to  be  confounded  with 
other  acts  of  religious  conduct  which  may  naturally  follow 
it ;  and  it  should  not  be  postponed  until  other  attainments 
of  religious  faith  are  gained  which  may  be  expected  as  its 
natural  sj^iritual  consequences. 

We  have  thus  been  considering  this  obligation  of  men  to  the  Church 
in  its  religious-ethical  elements  rather  than  in  its  theological  relations. 
In  relation  to  God  and  the  work  of  his  Spirit  the  discharge  of  this  primary- 
human  obligation  to  the  Church  may  put  a  soul  under  regenerative  influ- 
ences that  will  change  and  quicken  it  to  new  life.  All  those  intimate  and 
profound  religious  experiences  which  men  have  passed  through  in  the 
processes  of  regeneration  are  the  immediate  work  of  God  in  and  with 
the  soul  that  keeps  itself  freely  in  the  way  of  God's  renewing  grace ;  but 
the  first  duty  of  throwing  one's  self  into  the  current  of  spiritual  influence 
is  not  dependent  on  any  of  those  gracious  experiences  which  may  accom- 
pany or  result  from  that  absolute  self-committal  to  God. 

The  Church,  it  is  true,  would  suffer  loss  and  shame 
should  it  be  filled  with  unregenerate  souls ;  but  the  surest 
and  safest  way  of  causing  the  Church  to  abound  in  truly 
regenerate  life  is  not  to  apply  too  anxiously  selected 
tests  of  spiritual  experience  to  those  who  would  receive 
the  cup  of  the  Christ,  but  rather ^to  welcome  with  helpful 
and  hopeful  charity  those  who  would  seek  to  do  the  truth 
of  Christ.  We  can  judge  what  is  ethically  Christian  with 
truer  discernment  than  we  can  what  is  spiritually  pure 
and  rich  unto  God.  The  former,  when  it  exists,  usually 
proves  also  to  be  the  latter.  The  tree  is  known  by  its 
fruits.  The  fruit  of  the  Spirit  which  the  apostle  commends 
has  a  decided  ethical  color  and  ripeness.^  Insistence  on 
that  which  is  known  to  be  ethically  Christian  is  a  sure 
way  of  conserving  also  the  spiritual  regenerateness  of  the 
Church. 

2.    A  second  class  of  duties  of  men  towards  the  Church 

1  Gal.  v.  22,  23. 


430  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

comprises  those  further  obligations  which  should  be 
recognized  after  they  are  in  the  Church.  They  relate 
to  the  Church  itself,  and  its  obligation  to  the  world 
without. 

These  duties  within  the  Church  are  primarily  the  obliga- 
tions of  fellow-learners  of  Christ  and  fellow-helpers  to  the 
truth.  They  are  first  the  duty  of  loyalty  to  the  whole 
Church  —  the  one  holy  and  catholic  Church  to  which, 
whatever  one's  particular  communion,  he  belongs  and  owes 
supreme  allegiance ;  and  next,  those  more  special  and  im- 
mediate duties  which  are  to  be  fulfilled  in  the  particular 
church,  or  local  body  of  believers,  with  whom  one  is  joined 
in  direct  covenant  relation  under  common  responsibilities 
of  Christian  service. 

The  duties  of  those  within  the  Church  relate  also  to 
their  faithful  personal  use  and  maintenance  of  the  means 
of  grace,  to  the  special  Christian  works  which  may  be 
gathered  around  their  local  church,  and  to  their  participa- 
tion likewise  in  the  whole  missionary  endeavor  of  Christ's 
Church.  To  communicants  are  offered  as  means  of  grace 
in  Christ's  name  the  several  offices  of  healings,  helps,  gov- 
ernments which  the  Church  has  instituted,  —  such  as  the 
preaching  of  the  word,  the  house  of  prayer,  the  public  ser- 
vices of  the  sanctuary,  and,  at  the  centre  and  hearth  of  all 
ministries,  the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's  supper.  It  is  the 
dutiful  privilege  of  the  believer  to  avail  himself  of  these 
regular  means  of  grace,  ^id  to  do  his  full  part  in  sustain- 
ing them  for  the  use  of  others.  Regular  attendance  upon 
the  house  of  God  and  reception  of  the  sacrament  are  in- 
dispensable aids  to  growth  in  grace,  and  neglect  of  these 
ordinances  indicates  a  lowering  of  the  Christian  tone  and 
is  usually  followed  by  loss  of  spiritual  vigor  and  health. 
Other  means  of  self-culture  and  of  religious  nourishment, 
however  attractive,  cannot  take  the  place  of  the  public  ser- 
vices of  the  Church  ;  —  for  the  Christian  life  is  not  a  private 
or  merely  personal  communion  with  God,  but  it  is  essen- 
tially a  communion  of  believers  with  the  Lord ;  and  the 
law  of  Christian  knowledge  is  given  in  that  apostolic 
prayer  that ''  with  all  the  saints  "  we  may  know  the  love 


DUTIES   TOWARDS    OTHERS   AS   MORAL   ENDS  431 

of  Christ.  The  true  Church  is  Jesus  himself  in  the  midst 
of  his  disciples ;  and  we  must  be  among  the  disciples  to  be 
most  truly  and  fully  present  with  the  Lord.  The  obliga- 
tion of  public  worship  springs  directly  from  the  nature  of 
the  gospel  as  the  power  of  social  salvation.  We  can  re- 
ceive the  highest  gifts  of  God's  Spirit,  as  we  can  receive 
the  best  gifts  of  nature  —  the  sunshine,  the  invigorating 
breeze,  the  joy  of  the  creation,  —  only  as  we  share  them 
with  others. 

We  owe  also  in  the  Church  especial  duties  of  helpfulness 
and  care  to  others  who  are  of  the  same  household  of  faith. 
The  Church,  as  we  have  already  observed,  is  intended  to 
be  a  foreshadowing  of  the  perfection  of  human  society 
which  shall  be  fulfilled  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  Con- 
sequently this  prophetic  nature  of  the  Church  as  a  sign 
of  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  requires  of  its 
members  a  closer  walk  and  fellowship,  a  kindlier  charity 
and  a  more  watchful  sympathy  especially  in  the  household 
of  the  faith, 1  than  is  to  be  found  in  the  Avorld.  It  is  the 
duty  of  all  the  members  of  a  church  so  to  live  toward  one 
another  as  to  show  to  the  world  some  anticipatory  example 
of  what  human  society,  when  it  shall  be  wholly  redeemed, 
will  be  like.  It  is  the  privilege  and  high  calling  of  the 
Church  of  Christ  in  the  world  to  become  a  type  of  the  true 
kind  of  society.  The  obligation  therefore  of  mutual  for- 
bearance, helpfulness,  and  sympathy  within  the  Church, 
is  not  simply  the  general  duty  of  benevolence,  or  the 
accentuation  through  Christian  motives  of  the  common 
obligation  of  friendliness ;  it  is  not  simply  a  virtue  of 
sociableness  which  may  contribute  to  other  aims  of  the 
Church  ;  rather  is  it  the  obligation  of  showing  an  essential 
truth  of  Christianity  to  the  world.  This  conception  of  the 
social  life  of  the  Church  as  an  integral  part  of  its  Chris- 
tianity dignifies  and  exalts  it,  gives  it  breadth  and  mean- 
ing beyond  the  desire  merely  of  gratifjdng  the  natural  social 
impulses.  Hence  the  paramount  obligation  of  the  Church 
to  be  a  typical  society  cannot  be  discharged  simply  by  the 
enrichment  of  individual  friendships  or  the  enlargement 

1  Gal.  vi.  10. 


432  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

of  personal  acquaintance  through  the  fellowships  which 
may  be  formed  within  the  Church ;  but  the  social  aim  of 
the  Church  is  to  be  realized  through  a  communion  of  rich 
and  poor,  of  learned  and  unlearned,  of  all  classes  and 
conditions  of  men  in  a  common  life,  a  mutual  sympathy, 
and  a  single  purpose  and.  hope.  Rightly  conceived  noth- 
ing can  be  nobler  or  worthier  than  this  Christian  idea  of 
the  communion  of  believers  in  the  Church  of  Christ.  To 
it  is  intrusted  the  Christian  ideal  of  society,  so  far  as  that 
ideal  may  succeed  in  finding  visible  realization  in  a  sinful 
world.  Anything  therefore  in  the  Church  which  dwarfs 
or  mars  this  Christian  type  of  the  true  society,  is  to  be 
cast  out  as  of  this  world,  and  not  of  the  Spirit  of  the 
Christ.  Whatever  may  help  bring  out  this  Christian  idea 
of  society  in  a  church,  and  give  it  practical  embodiment 
and  visibility,  is  to  be  regarded  as  of  essential  importance, 
and  as  laying  therefore  an  obligation  on  all  the  members 
of  the  household  of  faith. 

3.  The  missionary  obligation  constitutes  the  third  duty 
of  the  Church  which  is  incumbent  upon  its  members. 

This  supreme  obligation  of  the  witnessing  Church  has 
had  noble  recognition  in  former  ages  of  faith,  although  it 
has  not  found  fitting  place  in  the  definitions  of  the  idea  of 
the  Church.  Our  century  is  by  no  means  the  first  to  know 
the  joy  of  missionary  devotion;  yet  it  is  the  crowning 
glory  of  our  Christian  age  to  inscribe  on  its  banners  the 
Lord's  commandment  of  discipling  all  nations.  The  idea 
of  a  consecrated  and  a  universal  service  distinctively 
characterizes  the  nineteenth  century  conception  of  the 
nature  and  the  aims  of  the  Church.  And  the  first  and 
essential  principle  of  Christian  virtue  is  the  source  and 
power  of  the  missionary  obligation :  "  For  the  love  of 
Christ  constraineth  us."  ^ 

§4. — DUTIES    WITHIN    THE    INDETERMINATE    SOCIAL    SPHERES 

In  this  class  of  duties  will  be  comprised  the  obligations 
which  grow  out  of  the  associations  of  men  in  those  volun- 
tary pursuits,  aims,  and  industrial   relations  which  bind 

1  2  Cor.  V.  14. 


DUTIES    TOWAEDS    OTHERS   AS   MORAL   ENDS         433 

them  together  temporarily,  or  with  more  enduring  ties  of 
friendship  and  mutual  concern. 

Under  this  head  descriptive  ethics  would  characterize  the  specific  duties 
of  the  school,  the  workshop,  the  social  circle,  the  business,  the  profession. 
The  duties  of  these  social  relations  are  the  specialized  forms  of  the  gen- 
eral Christian  obligation  to  live  with  a  good  conscience  and  from  the 
highest  motive  of  love. 

Passing  by  further  description  of  the  duties  to  be  ful- 
filled in  several  of  these  particular  social  groupings,  we 
notice  certain  Christian  obligations  which  need  emphasis  in 
three  of  these  spheres. 

1.  There  is  a  Christian  conscience  to  be  followed  in  our 
friendships. 

The  purest  and  sweetest  pages  of  ancient  literature  are 
those  devoted  to  friendship,  and  filled  with  its  aroma. 
Christian  ethics  consecrates  the  love  of  friends  with  a 
more  than  earthly  promise.  The  broken  friendships  of 
this  earth  are  bound  up  in  the  hope  of  a  heavenly  comple- 
tion. Jesus'  friendship  with  his  disciples  was  for  two 
worlds,  —  a  companionship  of  the  Son  of  man  while  he 
walked  with  them  on  this  earth,  and  also  a  communion 
with  Christ  in  the  last  supper,  as  they  kept  it  in  remem- 
brance of  Him,  and  in  the  hope,  likewise,  that  after  a  little 
while  He  should  see  them  again,  and  drink  the  fruit  of 
the  vine  new  with  them  in  the  Father's  kingdom.^  Hence 
all  the  obligations  as  well  as  delights  of  friendship  will  be 
purified,  exalted,  and  intensified  by  Christian  faith.  To 
the  Christian  conscience  the  duties  of  friendship  become 
doubly  sacred  because  it  has  the  promise  of  this  life  and 
of  the  world-ages  to  come.  Honorableness,  kindness,  for- 
bearance, loyalty,  the  charity  that  thinketh  no  evil,  — these 
are  Christian  virtues  which  must  enter  into  the  very  life 
and  happiness  of  friendship ;  and  with  these  graces  some 
touch  also  of  that  idealizing  virtue  of  the  Christian  imagi- 
nation, which  has  power  to  represent  the  characters  of 
others  not  merely  in  their  present  faults  and  rudenesses, 
but  also  in  something  of  their  future  Christian  triumph 

1  Matt.  xxvi.  29. 


434  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

and  perfection,  as  they  shall  be  changed  "from  glory  to 
glory  even  from  the  Lord,  the  Spirit."  ^ 

2.  There  is  a  Christian  industrial  conscience  to  be 
cultivated. 

Conscience  in  work  is  an  old-fashioned  industrial  virtue 
which  no  socialistic  promise  can  ever  render  antiquated. 
Faithfulness  in  all  the  services  which  men  are  to  render  to 
one  another  is  absolutely  required  by  the  law  of  Christian 
society.  A  good  industrial  conscience,  therefore,  in  all 
labor,  and  in  the  discharge  of  economic  responsibilities, 
needs  to  be  preached  alike  in  workshop  and  office  as  essen- 
tial truth  of  any  hopeful  social  gospel. 

The  particular  duties  which  a  sound  industrial  con- 
science will  recognize  are  not  to  be  put  into  abstract  for- 
mulas ;  they  are  to  be  the  true  judgments  by  the  Christian 
man,  in  each  individual  instance,  of  the  custom  of  the 
trade,  or  the  transaction  of  the  market  with  which  he  has 
to  do.  And  a  large  part  of  the  moral  education  of  life 
will  consist  in  learning  how  to  keep  the  moral  integrity,  to 
do  justice,  and  to  act  righteously,  in  these  ever  recurring 
perplexities  of  a  man's  business  relations.  Quick  moral 
discernment,  and  often  courage  in  business,  are  required 
in  order  to  observe  the  apostolic  precept  not  to  be  par- 
taker of  other  men's  sins.^  Certain  general  maxims  only 
may  be  derived  from  experience  for  the  guidance  of  the 
industrial  conscience.  Thus  the  choice  of  a  business 
should  itself  be  a  matter  of  moral,  as  well  as  financial 
consideration.  An  occupation  of  doubtful  moral  expedi- 
ency should  be  avoided.  A  calling  which  will  subject 
one  to  almost  certain  lapse  from  a  plane  of  honorable 
conduct,  should  be  deemed  a  temptation.  Or  even  though 
a  business  may  present  itself  which,  it  is  conceivable, 
another  might  pursue  without  moral  loss,  if  it  is  liable 
to  produce  a  moral  strain  on  some  portion  of  an  indi- 
vidual's nature  where  he  feels  himself  to  be  personally 
weak,  and  his  virtue  is  liable  to  break,  such  a  calling 
should  be  refused  as  one  morally  unsuited  and  wrong  for 
him.     Caution  also  needs  to  be  exercised  by  the  Christian 

1  2  Cor.  iii.  18.  2  i  Tim.  v.  22. 


DUTIES    TOWAEDS    OTHERS   AS    MOIIAL    ENDS         435 

man  especially  with  regard  to  the  corporate  relations  in 
which  he  allows  himself  to  become  involved.  For  the 
questions  which  affect  men's  consciences  in  their  corporate 
capacity,  are  beginning  to  constitute  a  distinct  and  con- 
siderable part  of  modern  casuistry.  Many  doubtful  modern 
cases  of  conscience,  so  called,  (which  the  older  casuists 
were  not  called  to  debate,)  arise  from  questions  of  the 
nature  and  degree  of  one's  individual  responsibility  in 
corporate  relations.  The  first  general  duty  for  the  Chris- 
tian man  in  this  matter  is  to  avoid  becoming  a  member 
of  any  corporation  whose  business  he  can  foresee  will 
inevitably  involve  him  personally  in  transactions  which  he 
cannot  approve,  and  which  he  thinks  ought  not  to  be 
allowed.  Nor  does  there  seem  to  be  any  doubt  that  a 
good  corporate  conscience  should  lead  one  to  act,  speak, 
and  vote  in  any  proposed  transaction  as  the  possessor  of  it 
would  do,  were  he  solely  responsible  for  the  business  in 
which  he  is  engaged.  One  cannot  hide  himself  entirely  in 
silence  and  inaction  from  a  morally  reprehensible  trans- 
action on  the  ground  that  the  soulless  corporation,  of 
which  he  is  a  member,  is  responsible  for  it.  So  far  as  a 
Christian  man  is  a  member  of  a  corporation,  that  corpora- 
tion ought  to  have  a  soul. 

But  does  a  difference  of  moral  judgment  as  to  any  act, 
or  business  method  of  a  corporation,  necessarily  require 
that  the  dissenting  member  shall  sell  out,  perhaps  at  a 
great  sacrifice  ?  or  that,  on  every  occasion  of  difference  of 
moral  judgment,  he  shall  make  his  dissent  known  outside 
as  w^ell  as  within  the  corporation  ? 

Other  interests  are  here  to  be  considered ;  other  obliga- 
tions may  become  paramount.  A  man  may  hold  in  a  cor- 
poration an  interest  which  he  is  under  no  little  obligation 
to  maintain  and  defend.  He  may  hold  it  in  trust  for 
others.  By  remaining  as  a  dissenting  member  of  a  cor- 
poration he  may  protect  the  interests  of  other  shareholders, 
and  possibly  in  time  save  the  cprporation  itself  from 
questionable  methods.  The  general  ethical  maxim  must 
admit,  in  these  instances  of  moral  perplexity,  a  certain 
scope  and  space  for  the  adjustment  of  conflicting  claims ; 


436  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

it  can  only  dictate  in  general  that  the  resultant  action 
should  be  clear  and  straightforward  so  far  as  the  individual 
is  concerned ;  whether  the  protest  against  evil  within  the 
corporation  is  enough,  or  whether  remaining  in  ineffectual 
protest  against  evil  involves  personal  complicity  in  it,  are 
moral  questions  to  be  decided  in  each  individual  instance. 
If  the  latter  supposition  grows  clear,  the  duty  of  cutting 
loose  at  any  cost  from  the  evil  will  become  plain. 

A  good  industrial  conscience  will  be  on  its  guard  against  all  transac- 
tions which  involve  a  change  of  property  without  value  received.  Betting 
and  gambling  are  demoralizing  because  they  violate  the  first  economic 
principle  of  value  in  exchange.  Speculation  is  competition  run  wild.  In  all 
transactions  where  there  is  gain  without  compensation,  competition  with- 
out co-operation,  the  true  social  law  of  exchange  is  violated;  the  Chris- 
tian ethics  of  business  is  mutual  service  in  labor  and  mutual  benefit  in 
exchange.  A  discussion  of  the  relation  of  speculation  to  morals  may  be 
found  in  President  Hopkins's  volume  on  The  Law  of  Love  ^  pp.  188  seq.; 
and  also  in  President  Porter's  Elements  of  Moral  Science,  pp.  355  seq. 
The  earlier  Puritan  view  of  games  of  hazard  may  be  learned  from  Per- 
kins's Cases  of  Conscience.  He  distinguishes  between  "  games  of  wit  and 
industry,"  which  he  thinks  are  "very  commendable,"  and  "games  of 
hazard,  and  a  mixture  of  both,"  The  latter  class  of  mixed  games,  partly 
of  hazard  and  partly  of  wit,  like  cards,  Perkins  admits  may  be  used, 
though  "very  sparingly."  But  he  condemns  games  of  mere  hazard  be- 
cause they  are  an  irreligious  use  of  the  lot,  and  because  "they  are  not 
recreations,  but  rather  matter  of  stirring  up  troublesome  passions,  as 
fear,  sorrow,  etc.,  and  so  they  distemper  body  and  mind,"  and  also 
because  "  covetousness  is  commonly  the  ground  of  them  all"  (pp.  346, 
347). 

The  Christian  industrial  conscience  will  also  be  con- 
cerned with  those  mutual  obligations  between  men  which 
arise  from  the  existence  of  social  classes,  and  from  the 
industrial  differentiations  of  the  modern  v/orld.  The  obli- 
gations of  capitalists  and  contractors,  of  employers  and 
employees,  of  different  trades  to  one  another,  of  masters 
and  servants,  —  all  present  distinct  kinds  and  combinations 
of  virtues  and  duties  which  a  good  industrial  and  com- 
munal conscience  will  be  quick  to  discern.  The  Christian 
principle  of  social  differentiation  is  that  we  are  members 
one  of  another.!  Humanity  is  one  body  in  Christ.  Run- 
ning through  and  through  and  around  all  industrial  and 

1  1  Cor.  xii.  12-27. 


DUTIES   TOWARDS    OTHERS   AS   MORAL   ENDS          437 

economic  relations,  the  Spirit  of  Christianity  owns  and 
emphasizes  the  common  human  fellowship  in  which  all 
classes  and  conditions  of  men  exist.  For  ten  or  more 
hours  each  week-day  men  may  hold  towards  each  other 
economic  relations  as  wage-givers  and  wage-receivers,  as 
employers  and  employed.  For  the  remainder  of  each 
twenty-four  hours  men  stand  related  to  each  other  simply 
and  solely  as  men.  For  the  working  parts  of  six  days  men 
may  be  bound  together  in  their  industries  by  the  laws  of 
economics ;  for  one  day  in  seven  men  in  general  have  no 
industrial  claims  upon  one  another.  On  the  Sabbath  day 
the  State  intervenes  with  its  power  to  protect  the  weakest 
factory  girl  from  the  clatter  of  machinery  ;  mammon  loosens 
its  grasp  on  the  pulses  of  human  life,  and  men  may  live 
towards  one  another  as  children  of  the  same  Father  in 
heaven.  This  larger  human  relation  was  before,  and  is 
after,  and  circumscribes  all  lesser,  accidental,  and  tempo- 
rary economic  relations  of  men.  This  common  humanity 
should  not  indeed  be  lost  sight  of  in  the  midst  of  the 
economies  of  manufacture  and  trade ;  it  is  not  to  be 
excluded  altogether  from  the  workshop,  nor  at  any  time 
to  be  AvhoUy  forgotten  between  employer  and  employed ; 
but  it  should  be  openly  owned,  honored,  and  cherished  as 
men  meet  outside  of  their  industrial  relations  in  the  pur- 
suit and  enjoyment  of  the  common  aims  of  human  exist- 
ence. Christianity  insists  with  a  perpetual  insistence 
upon  the  respect  and  reverence  for  the  humanity  of  men. 
Human  beings  are  not  created  as  prime  numbers  towards 
one  another  without  kindred  interests,  which  are  as  the 
common  divisors  of  their  lives. 

There  are  two  persons  in  the  community  whose  calling 
it  is  to  trace  through  men's  lives  these  common  factors  of 
humanity,  —  the  physician,  who  follows  the  same  course  of 
human  weakness  and  suffering  among  the  rich  and  the 
poor,  and  who  is  familiar  with  the  dread  powers  before 
which  we  all  are  mortal;  and  the  pastor,  who  finds  the 
same  elements  of  humanity  from  house  to  house ;  who 
reads  the  same  old,  human  story  of  love  and  troth  in  the 
vows  spoken  under  the  costliest  wedding  bell,  or  taken  by 


438  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

the  light  of  the  humblest  hearth,  where  a  strong  arm  and 
a  true  heart  begin  once  more  to  make  together  a  hopeful 
home ;  who  prays  before  the  same  human  mourning  and 
sorrow  in  the  heart  of  the  poor  woman  who  must  give  her 
first-born  to  the  death-angel  of  God,  while  her  husband 
can  hardly  stop  long  enough  from  his  work  to  brush  Avith 
his  sleeve  the  tear  from  his  eye ;  and  also  in  the  silent 
mansion  where  father  and  mother  would  give  all  that  they 
have,  could  they  see  again  between  them  the  little  child 
whose  angel-spirit  now  beholds  the  face  of  its  Father  in 
heaven.  And  to  one  who  has  thus  followed  these  strong, 
elastic,  all-embracing  lines  of  hum.anity,  in  which  the 
Creator  has  bound  together  the  lives  of  men  and  of  women, 
the  artificial  distinctions  of  life  appear  but  glitter  and 
gauze ;  and  even  the  hum  of  oar  industries  and  the  din  of 
the  market-place  become  as  distant  sounds  —  but  echoes  of 
a  passing  strife  —  to  him  whose  heart  is  filled  with  these 
sweet  and  solemn  and  most  human  voices,  in  whose  song 
and  supplication  all  men's  joys  and  sorrows  seem  to  be 
blended  in  one  prayer  of  humanity  to  the  Father. 

With  such  humanities  the  economist,  as  an  economist,  may 
have  nothing  directly  to  do.  It  is  his  business  with  scien- 
tific coolness  to  calculate  the  value  of  utilities  under  the 
operation  of  the  common  motives  of  men ;  but  with  these 
humanities  every  man  at  his  work,  and  still  more  in  his 
mingling  with  men  out  of  his  working  hours,  has  in  the 
sight  of  God  very  much  to  do.  No  man  in  his  accidental 
and  temporal  position  of  service  or  of  authority  can  escape 
these  essential  and  eternal  obligations  of  humanity.  The 
ethics  of  the  Son  of  man  keeps  these  highest  social  utilities 
first  and  foremost  in  the  thoughts  and  the  endeavors  of 
the  children  of  the  Fatiier.^ 

3.  There  is  also  a  professional  conscience  to  be  regarded. 
Certain  special  social  duties  may  be  conveniently  grouped 
under  the  ethics  of  the  different  callings  and  professions. 

(1)  The  educated  man  is  under  special  obligations  to 
the  community.     It  has  been  happily  said  that  tlie  scholar 

1  We  can  determine  the  industrial  duties  more  definitely  after  discussing  in 
the  next  chapter  the  present  social  problem. 


DUTIES    TO^VARDS    OTHERS    AS    MORAL   ENDS  439 

has  received  the  people's  oil,  and  it  is  his  duty  to  return 
it  in  light.  All  the  common  social  obligations  rest  with  a 
peculiar  force  on  the  educated  man.  He  can  appreciate 
the  social  need ;  he  has  resources  of  knowledge  from  which 
to  bring  guidance  for  the  life  of  the  people.  He  has 
trained  intelligence  to  be  consecrated  to  the  service  of 
men.  That  is  now  true  of  the  republic  of  letters  wdiich 
was  once  said  by  a  Rabbi  of  the  mission  of  the  Jewish 
people,  — it  is  "a  nation  of  teachers,  for  mankind." 

(2)  Each  profession  and  calling,  besides  the  common 
obligations  of  educated  men,  has  its  own  ethical  type  and 
laws  to  maintain.  The  three  learned  professions,  law, 
medicine,  and  divinity,  have  their  special  rules  of  pro- 
fessional conduct  which  it  is  deemed  dishonorable  to  disre- 
gard. These  professional  codes  have  arisen  through  more 
or  less  happy  adaptations  of  the  genei'al  human  virtues  to 
the  requirements  of  particular  callings ;  they  may  be  re- 
garded as  the  evolution  of  particular  varieties  of  character 
in  response  to  special  modifications  of  environment.  They 
are  not  usually  fixed  and  permanent,  but  are  always  in  the 
process  of  further  modification  in  adaptation  to  changing 
conditions ;  professional  ethics  constitute  mutable  ethical 
varieties  rather  than  permanent  species  of  moral  develop- 
ment. Yet  as  varieties  they  may  become  quite  distinctly 
marked.  A  necessary  duty  of  one  entering  into  these  pro- 
fessions is  to  familiarize  himself  with  the  special  moral 
requirements  of  his  chosen  profession.  Its  dignity  is  to 
be  maintained ;  its  welfare  is  to  be  studied ;  its  honor  is  to 
be  kept.  Professional  ethics  comprise  certain  duties  which 
are  regarded  as  due  other  members  of  the  same  profession, 
and  also  the  maintenance  of  a  good  esprit  de  co7ys,  an 
honorable  regard  for  the  interests  of  the  profession,  and 
willing  service  in  it  as  a  calling  distinct  from  others  in  the 
world.  The  observance  of  professional  etiquette,  and  a 
high  and  constant  sense  of  professional  honor,  are  much 
needed  virtues ;  habitual  disregard  of  these  special  obliga- 
tions justly  exposes  the  person  who  thus  proves  himself 
unworthy  of  his  profession  to  expulsion  from  its  ranks  and 
the  loss  of  its  privileges. 


440  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

The  heart  of  professional  ethics  is  really  the  golden 
rule ;  most  of  those  customs  and  maxims  which  make  up 
the  professional  code  (so  far  as  they  are  justifiable)  are 
applications,  which  have  been  approved  by  experience,  of 
the  principle  of  doing  unto  others  in  the  same  profession 
as  men  in  their  own  professional  relations  would  have 
others  do  unto  them. 

Such  codes,  it  is  true,  may  be  carried  to  an  unreasonable 
extent,  and  the  interest  of  a  class  may  be  sometimes  pro- 
tected and  served  beyond  the  interest  of  society.  Then 
(the  larger  group  and  its  good  may  give  law  to  the  lesser 
group  and  its  welfare.  The  professional  code  may  receive 
modification  from  the  assertion  of  the  public  interest.  If, 
for  example,  those  already  in  a  trade  or  a  profession  should 
impose  unreasonable  and  excessive  restrictions  upon  the 
admission  of  others  to  their  circle,  and  thereby  prevent 
useful  competition,  public  sentiment,  and  legislation,  if 
necessary,  may  justly  intervene  to  rebuke  and  to  restrain 
the  presumption  of  a  class. 

The  special  ethics  of  particular  organizations  of  men  and  combinations 
of  classes  for  the  promotion  of  their  own  interest,  will  require  in  the 
future  more  intelligent  and  thorough  discussion.  The  ethics  of  Trades 
Unions  and  the  ethics  of  Trusts,  in  short,  the  methods  morally  allowable 
in  advancing  class-interests,  need  to  be  held  up  to  the  light  of  the 
supreme  Christian  principles  of  social  well-being.  On  the  one  hand,  if 
duties  towards  self,  and  especially  the  obligation  of  the  largest  possible 
self-development  be  granted,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  men  may  combine 
for  self-advancement.  Trades  Unions  and  also  Trusts  must  be  admitted 
as  morally  allowable,  so  far  as  their  object  is  the  maintenance  of  rights 
and  the  advancement  of  interests  which  are  common  to  a  given  number  or 
to  a  definite  class  of  men.  The  principle,  however,  of  self-interest, 
whether  the  self  be  an  individual  or  a  corporate  self,  or  the  larger  self  of 
some  social  group,  can  be  permitted  to  work  only  under  the  law  of 
mutual  service  for  the  welfare  of  the  whole  social  body.  Any  methods, 
therefore,  of  the  strife  of  labor,  or  of  the  aggrandizement  of  capital, 
which  promote  the  economic  interest  of  a  class  to  the  detriment  of  all 
the  rest  of  us,  do  violence  to  the  first  law  of  organic  well-being,  and  are 
to  be  resisted  for  the  public  good.  The  law  of  mutual  benefit  is  the 
supreme  law  of  Christian  association. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THS   SOCIAL   PROBLEM   AND   CHRISTIAN   DUTIES 

In  the  preceding  chapter  we  have  considered  the  second 
class  of  duties  both  in  their  general  character  and  in  the 
chief  spheres  of  their  obligation.  The  claims  of  labor, 
however,  present  distinct  social  questions  which  are  of 
the  greatest  moral  moment;  and  in  modern  Christian 
ethics,  therefore,  a  special  chapter  should  be  devoted  to 
a  discussion  of  social  duties  in  view  of  existing  industrial 
conditions. 

There  has  always  been  a  labor  question  since  the  day 
when  Adam  and  Eve  were  obliged  to  make  clothes  for 
themselves,  and  to  work  in  order  to  support  themselves 
and  their  children.  There  always  will  be  an  industrial 
problem  until  paradise  shall  be  regained.  Whenever  two 
or  more  individuals  are  thrown  together  and  must  live  in 
the  same  locality,  the  social  question  will  arise.  How  shall 
they  possess  themselves  of  the  means  of  life  without 
destroying  one  another  in  gaining  and  using  them  ?  How 
shall  they  bring  their  lives  to  the  utmost  possible  mutual 
efficiency  ?  This  may  be  a  comparatively  simple  question 
for  a  single  family,  or  for  a  nomadic  tribe,  or  for  a  com- 
munity which  has  possessed  itself  of  a  common  field  large 
enough  for  its  own  sustenance,  and  which  is  strong  enough 
to  prevent  any  other  tribe  from  dispossessing  it.  It  be- 
comes a  complicated  question  for  a  crowded  city  at  the 
centre  of  a  network  of  communications  with  the  whole 
world.  The  present  urgency  of  these  problems  is  the 
natural  consequence  of  a  high  and  complex  social  devel- 
opment, with  its  fine  differentiations  of  social  structure, 
and  the  greatly  multiplied  functions  that  must  be  har- 
monized in  the  efficient  maintenance  of  the  social  body. 

441 


442  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

Our  industrial  questions,  although  in  some  aspects  omi- 
nous, are  to  be  regarded  as  signs  of  promise,  because  they 
are  thus  directly  occasioned  by  the  growtli  of  society  and 
are  demands  for  organic  social  adaptations  to  still  more 
complex  conditions  of  human  life.  The  study  of  our 
social  problems,  instead  of  being  the  ''  dismal  science  "  of 
economics,  has  become  the  profoundly  interesting  science 
of  the  laws  and  processes  of  social  development. 

The  first  thing  always  needing  to  be  done  in  order  that 
felt  evils  may  be  removed,  is  to  localize  those  evils,  —  to 
observe  what  social  functions  are  involved,  and  to  discover, 
so  far  as  possible,  their  ultimate  causes.  An  evil  which 
may  be  seen  to  be  an  incident  of,  or  a  more  or  less  prevent- 
able reaction  from,  a  salutary  process  of  social  differentia- 
tion and  growth,  is  a  very  different  thing  from  an  evil 
that  may  be  symptomatic  of  some  deeper  constitutional 
disorder,  Avhich  the  social  system  must  cast  out  to  prevent 
universal  dissolution.  While  the  poet  and  prophet  of  the 
better  world-age  to  come  will  always  have  their  mission 
from  God  to  comfort  the  heart  of  the  people  and  to 
inspire  the  chosen  servants  of  the  social  ideal  with  undy- 
ing hope  ;  still,  a  first  necessity  of  reform,  an  indispensable 
prerequisite  of  political  progress,  is  the  science  of  soci- 
ology, with  its  painstaking  inductions,  and  its  careful  clas- 
sifications of  the  social  structure,  organs,  and  functions. 
• 

I.   THE  EXISTING   SOCIAL   PROBLEM 

1.  We  may  clear  this  matter  from  many  confusions  by 
applying  first  the  method  of  exclusion,  and  observing  in 
what  our  social  problem  does  not  essentially  consist. 

(1)  It  is  not  simply  the  prevalence  of  much  social  dis- 
content. A  rapid  increase  of  such  dissatisfaction  in  any 
large  class  of  men  betrays  indeed  the  existence  of  much 
friction  and  waste  at  some  points  of  the  industrial  mechan- 
ism; and  such  wear  and  heat,  even  at  seemingly  unimpor- 
tant points,  may  indicate  something  wrong  that  must  l)e 
made  right,  or  the  whole  productive  power  may  be  brought 
to  a  disastrous  stop. 


THE    SOCIAL   PEOBLEM   AND   CHRISTIAN   DUTIES      443 

But  social  discontent  is  no  new  phenomenon ;  and  the 
real  causes  which  produce  it  may  not  be  the  evils  of  which 
complaint  is  most  loudly  made.  Distress  in  any  social 
organ  or  function  is  a  symptom  of  disorder  which  Avill  not 
escape  the  notice  of  the  social  student ;  but  there  are 
pains  of  birth  and  growth  as  well  as  of  death;  and  the 
present  restlessness  and  discontent  which  pervade  large 
classes  of  men,  are  not  altogether  unhealthy  or  unpromis- 
ing indications. 

(2)  The  social  problem  is  not  comprehended  when  we 
refer  to  the  existence  of  a  great  amount  of  poverty. 

It  is  not  merely  a  question  how  many  poor,  more  or  less, 
we  may  have  with  us  in  this  age  of  machinery ;  for  our 
social  problem  would  be  still  far  from  solution  although  a 
sufficient  distribution  of  the  products  could  be  secured  to 
give  all  men  enough  bread  to  eat.  It  may  be  argued,  with 
tables  of  statistics  for  evidence,  that  the  wealth  of  nations 
is  shared  by  a  greater  number  of  persons  than  ever  before, 
and  that  wage-earners  have  more  things,  and,  what  is  still 
more  to  the  point,  are  less  exposed  to  violent  fluctuations 
of  the  bread-market  in  this  capitalistic  era  than  has  been 
the  case  under  any  previous  industrial  conditions.  But 
the  social  difficulty  is  not  met  by  these  considerations,  for 
it  is  not  a  question  merely  of  the  better  supply  for  the 
once  necessary  wants  of  labor,  but  it  is  the  larger  problem 
of  new  wants  among  whole  classes  of  the  community. 

(3)  Neither  is  the  social  problem  to  be  confounded  with 
any  question  that  may  arise  concerning  the  utility  of 
some  particular  method  of  our  present  industrial  economy. 
No  mistake  is  more  common  among  writers  on  these  sub- 
jects than  to  assume  that  some  method  of  industry,  or 
some  function  of  social  life,  is  the  characteristic  and  con- 
stitutive feature  of  the  existing  social  organization,  to 
which  may  be  attributed,  as  the  sole  cause,  almost  all  the 
ills  to  which  the  social  body  has  fallen  heir.  Competition, 
for  example,  is  one  method,  yet  not  by  any  means  the  sole 
method  of  the  existing  industrial  system ;  combination  is 
another  method ;  state  ownership  of  some  of  the  means  of 
communication  and  circulation  also  characterizes  the  exist- 


444  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

ing  economy.  It  is  a  short  way  of  controversy  to  ascribe 
to  a  single  method  evils  or  benefits  which  may  seem  im- 
mediately to  spring  from  it,  but  which  might  remain,  for 
better  or  for  worse,  were  existing  methods  to  be  materially 
altered,  or  exchanged  even  for  others  altogether  new  and 
untried.  The  distresses  which  are  prevalent  under  our 
methods  of  free  competition  and  of  great  combinations, 
we  should  patiently  seek  to  trace  back  through  their  re- 
moter connections  with  the  ultimate  social  structure,  and 
to  their  final  moral  as  well  as  economic  causes.  A  partic- 
ular industrial  method  may  itself  be  good,  although  evil 
from  other  sources  may  be  flowing  through  it.  Thus  com- 
petition may  carry,  like  a  conduit,  evil  influences  which  it 
does  not  itself  originate.  Diseases  which  may  result  because 
some  pollution  has  been  poured  into  a  stream  farther  up, 
are  not  to  be  remedied  by  putting  a  dam  across  the  current 
or  changing  its  course. 

The  statement  of  the  social  problem  should  be  kept 
scientifically  clear  from  confusion  with  effects  which  may 
be  merely  symptomatic  or  incidental,  and  it  needs  to  be 
defined  by  a  careful  diagnosis  of  the  conditions  and  func- 
tions of  the  social  organism. 

2.  We  must  seek,  therefore,  for  a  more  positive  deter- 
mination of  the  nature  of  the  existing  social  problem. 

(1)  One  significant  sign  is  to  be  observed  in  the  im- 
personality, or  anonymousness,  of  modern  industrial  life.  ^ 

The  perfection  of  machinery  cheapens  fabrics  and 
crushes  personality.  Workmen  are  numbered  as  hands. 
They  cease  to  be  fellow-laborers,  unless  they  become  mem- 
bers one  of  another  in  some  union  outside  the  workshop. 
Men  are  no  longer  bound  to  their  native  soil,  but  in  the 
freedom  of  labor  to  go  where  it  will,  and  on  swift  lines  of 
travel,  they  cast  off  the  ties  of  any  local  inheritance  and 
fail  even  to  be  bound  together  by  the  skill  of  a  common 
handicraft.     Workmen    are    huddled    for   the    day's    toil 

iMr.  Mackenzie  has  rightly  singled  out  "the  impersonality  of  relations  in 
an  industrial  community,"  as  one  of  the  "conditions  of  difficulty"  in  our 
social  problem.  —  An  Introdvction  to  Social  Philosophy,  p.  99.  Similarly, 
Paulsen  characterizes  this  ominous  feature  of  modern  life  by  the  phrase,  "its 
fearful  anonymousness."  — JSystem  der  Ethik,  s.  687. 


THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  AND   CHRISTIAN  DUTIES      445 

together  amid  the  clatter  of  the  factory.  As  man  goes  to 
his  labor  the  human  voice  ceases,  and  the  hum  of  machinery 
is  everywhere  heard. 

(2)  Together  with  this  impersonality  of  w^ork,  appears 
the  further  and  still  more  ominous  tendenc}^  of  society  to 
gather  around  two  opposite  poles,  capital  and  labor ;  and 
between  these  centres  of  class  segregation  to  lose  indus- 
trial cohesion  and  to  imperil  social  solidarity. 

Under  the^  old  dispensation  of  industrial  status,  which 
has  passed  away,  the  feudal  lord  and  his  dependents  were 
held  together  by  many  mutual  interests  and  dangers,  and 
in  common  festivities,  likewise,  in  the  same  banquet  hall. 
In  this  new  era  of  industrial  freedom  the  mansion  and  the 
tenement  may  exist  within  a  few  blocks  of  each  other,  but 
the  capitalists  and  the  day-laborers  belong  to  different 
worlds,  and  there  is  little  that  they  may  seem  to  share 
together.  The  mediaeval  guilds,  before  they  began  to 
degenerate,  united  masters,  journeymen,  and  apprentices 
by  ties  of  mutual  acquaintance,  indispensableness,  and 
profit ;  our  industrial  liberty  knows  but  the  one  bond 
of  contract,  and  ow^ns  but  the  single  obligation  of  the 
market-price  of  labor.  The  factory-system,  and  particu- 
larly the  method  of  manufactui'ing  through  the  interven- 
tion of  a  new  class  of  undertakers  and  contractors,  widens 
the  breach  between  men,  and  tends  to  diminish  still  more 
dangerously  the  cohesive  power  of  the  industrial  organ- 
ization. 

(3)  Another  sign  to  be  taken  into  account  in  determin- 
ing the  social  problem  is  the  human  waste  under  the 
present  industrial  system. 

While  the  existence  of  poverty  does  not  by  any  means 
measure  our  whole  social  problem,  the  human  Avaste  in 
what  is  called  the  submerged  class  shows  that  the  present 
system  is  not  accomplishing  all  that  should  be  expected  of 
a  good  social  organization.  The  population  seems  to 
crowd  more  than  ever  the  industrial  life-raft ;  and  the 
sinking  classes,  the  "  submerged  tenth,"  show  that  there  is 
a  human  loss  w  hich  social  economics  should  seek  to  pre- 
vent, and  which  Christian  ethics  must  regard  as  intolerable. 


446  CHKISTIAN   ETHICS 

Where  there  exists  a  large  "  reserved  army  of  industry  " 
(to  use  Karl  Marx's  significant  expression) ;  where,  with- 
out fixed  home  or  certain  ground  for  economic  existence, 
an  unstable  population  increases,  on  which  capital  may 
make  drafts  at  sight  to  cheapen  labor,  and  to  increase  its 
profits,  it  is  evident  that  the  greatest  degree  of  social 
efficiency  is  far  from  having  been  reached,  and  that  the 
problem  of  the  human  struggle  for  existence  waits  for 
some  more  just  and  happier  solution. 

(4)  Another  ominous  sign  is  the  tendency  to  form 
three  permanent  monopolies,  —  the  monopoly  of  land,  of 
capital,  and  of  place  ;  and  of  the  three  evils  the  latter 
would  be  felt  by  many  as  the  worst  class  grievance.^ 

The  evils  which  have  already  been  mentioned  are  in 
part  caused  and  in  part  aggravated  by  these  monopolistic 
tendencies  to  make  class  interests  of  the  means  and  the 
opportunities  of  life.  Socialism  has  a  case  in  its  protest 
against  them ;  and  all  considerations  of  social  utility 
require  that  some  means,  either  natural  or  legislative,  be 
found  to  check  and  to  keep  within  safe  limits  these 
monopolies  which  existing  industrial  conditions  permit. 

If  the  first  two  of  these  monopolies  threaten  to  take 
from  the  people  the  means  of  subsistence,  the  latter 
inflicts  the  even  worse  injury  of  robbing  the  homes  of 
the  poor  of  hope.  There  is  social  danger  to  be  appre- 
hended if  the  accumulations  of  inheritance  and  the  com- 
binations of  capital  should  block  the  paths  of  successful 
endeavor  to  natural  talent  and  enterprise  ;  and  we  cannot 
look  on  with  ethical  unconcern  if  the  way  lengthens,  and 
becomes  almost  hopeless,  for  the  industrial  virtues  to  reach 
competence  and  honorable  position  in  the  world. 

Although  we  may  question  the  justness  of  socialistic 
principles  of  equal  rewards,  we  must  admit  as  socially 
desirable  the  greatest  possible  equality  of  opportunity  at 
the  start  for  natural  talent  and  industrial  virtue.^  It  may 
be  urged  that  the  total  social  prosperity  requires  the  exist- 

J  See  Graham,  Socialism,  New  and  Old,  p.  288. 

2  Mr.  Marshall  justly  remarks  that  the  progress  of  theAvorking  classes  "  has 
done  more  than  anything  else  to  give  practical  interest  to  the  question 
whether  it  is  really  impossible  that  all  should  start  in  the  world  with  a  fair 


THE   SOCIAL   PROBLEM   AND   CHRISTIAN   DUTIES      447 

ence  of  industrial  classes ;  that  these  social  divisions  are 
not  necessarily  to  be  deplored,  if  the  cross-ways  between 
them,  and  the  avenues  of  advancement  from  one  to  another 
are  kept  open  and  free  to  individual  enterprise  and  ability. 
But  any  obstruction  of  free  circulation  in  the  social  organ- 
ism is  a  sign  of  disease  and  danger.  Society  is  not  in  a 
state  of  healthful  equilibrium  if  the  opportunities  of  success 
are  the  share  of  the  privileged  few,  and  hopelessness  the 
inheritance  of  the  many.  Wherever  a  large  mass  of  social 
hopelessness  has  accumulated  at  some  crowded  centre  of 
civilization,  it  exists  as  so  much  dry  tinder  for  the  spark 
of  the  agitator ;  but  where,  on  the  other  hand,  free  indus- 
trial space,  new  growths,  and  open  possibilities  of  advance- 
ment are  to  be  found,  it  will  be  impossible  even  for 
recklessness  and  passion  to  kindle  a  social  conflagration. 

3.  In  view  of  these  signs  and  tendencies,  we  may  reach 
the  following  general  conclusion  concerning  the  nature  of 
our  social  problem:  the  evils,  which  we  have  noticed, 
accompany  the  rapid  differentiation  of  the  complex  ele- 
ments and  functions  of  modern  life ;  our  social  need, 
consequently,  is  a  further  and  better  integration  of  these 
factors.  The  vast  and  rapid  industrial  development  of  our 
age  threatens  social  disintegration ;  what  the  age  demands 
is  some  larger  and  happier  social  integration.  In  this  new 
wholeness  and  soundness  of  society  all  the  differentiations 
which  have  been  historically  developed,  are  not  to  be  de- 
stroyed but  to  be  fulfilled.  Our  social  problem  is  to  work 
out  the  next  needed  social  integration. 

Paulsen  defines  the  social  question  in  these  words  :  "The  inward  disso- 
lution of  the  body  of  the  people,  that  is  now  exactly  the  social  question, 
.  .  .  The  form  in  which  the  social  question  now  comes  up,  is  the 
inner  dissolution  {Aiiflosung')  of  the  body  of  the  people  through  the  pro- 
gressive proletarizing  of  a  constantly  increasing  portion  of  the  population 
on  the  one  side,  and  through  the  corresponding  over-fattening  {Verfet- 
tung)  on  the  other  side.  On  the  one  side  the  personal  spiritual-moral 
life  falls  to  the  ground  through  impoverishment  and  isolation,  on  the 
other  side  through  idleness  and  luxuriousness  "  {02ms  cit.  s.  691).    Brentano 


chance  of  leading  a  cultured  life,  free  from  the  pains  of  poverty  and  the  stag- 
nating influences  of  excessive  mechanical  toil ;  and  this  question  is  being 
pressed  to  the  front  by  the  growing  earnestness  of  the  age."  —  Principles  of 
Economics,  p.  3. 


448  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

gives  the  following  statement  of  the  social  task  to  be  accomplished :  "  In 
short  the  labor  question  appears  to  us  as  the  task  not  of  removing  the  differ- 
ences in  the  social  classes,  but  of  reducing  them  to  that  degree  which  the 
harmony  of  the  life  of  the  whole  requires"  (77ie  lielation  of  Labor  to 
the  Law  of  To-day,  p.  280).  Compare  with  the  above  these  words  of  Mr. 
Mackenzie  :  "  Now,  apart  from  this  advance  in  our  material  prosperity, 
the  conditions  which  make  the  social  problem  more  hopeful  at  the  present 
time  may,  I  believe,  all  be  brought  under  the  head  of  progress  towards  a 
new  integration,  just  as  the  conditions  of  difficulty  consisted  in  the  main 
in  the  various  aspects  of  a  process  of  differentiation"  {Lntrodiiction  to 
Social  Philosophy,  p.  lOG). 


XL   THE  NEW    INTEGRATION    PROPOSED   BY  SOCIALISM 

Socialism  ventures  upon  the  task  just  proposed  with  a 
confident  programme  for  a  new  social  order.  It  indicts 
the  present  system  as  unjust,  and  it  offers  a  new  dispen- 
sation of  Collectivism,  or  the  Collective  Commonwealth, 
in  its  place.  The  moral  indictment  of  socialism  against 
present  civilization  will  be  found,  when  analyzed,  to  con- 
sist of  two  principal  allegations ;  one  is  the  somewhat 
vague  assertion  that  every  man  has  a  right  to  a  fair  share 
of  the  products  of  civilization,  supported  by  the  specifica- 
tions that  inequalities,  which  are  dehumanizing,  and  which 
ought  not  to  be,  exist  in  the  present  industrial  world. 
The  other  charge  is  the  contention  that  certain  methods 
of  the  present  system,  such  as  competition,  production 
through  private  capital,  individual  ownership  of  the  means 
of  production,  and  the  distribution  of  goods  by  the  present 
monetary  means  of  exchange,  are  directly  responsible  for 
these  wrongs,  and  are  intrinsically  evil.  It  is  necessary, 
therefore,  before  we  can  become  clear  as  to  our  further 
Christian  social  duties,  for  us  to  examine  both  these 
charges  of  socialism  against  the  existing  order. 

1.  The  first  contention  that  every  one  should  receive  a 
fair  share  of  the  products  of  civilization  may  be  admitted 
as  an  abstract  statement ;  the  practical  difficulty  is  to  de- 
termine what  is  each  one's  share,  or  on  Avhat  moral  prin- 
ciples in  our  world  the  division  can  be  made.  Is  there 
any  economic  rule  capable  of  application,  even  if  we 
sui)pose  that  some  collective  body  had  power  to  apply  it  to 


THE   SOCIAL   PEOBLEM   AND    CHRISTIAN   DUTIES      449 

all  alike,  by  means  of  which  the  proper  and  fair  share  of 
every  workman  in  every  part  of  all  the  products  of  the 
common  industry  could  be  determined?  Take  a  yard 
of  cotton  cloth,  for  instance,  and  endeavor  with  a  pair  of 
scissors  to  divide  that  yard  of  cloth  into  strips,  each  one  of 
which  shall  represent  the  fair  share  of  each  kind  of  labor 
—  the  work,  thought,  management,  and  interests  of  all 
kinds  that  are  woven  together  in  its  production.  Take 
that  cloth  from  the  hand  of  the  clerk  who  sells  it,  or  the 
errand  boy  who  must  have  some  thread  in  it  to  represent 
his  share,  and  try  to  divide  it  fairly  in  justice  to  the  claims 
of  all  whose  labor  is  represented  in  it,  from  the  hands  on 
the  cotton  fields  to  the  last  man  who  had  anything  to  do 
with  bringing  it  to  you  ready  for  your  use  ;  and  you  could 
more  easily  unravel  the  threads  of  which  it  is  woven  than 
untangle  that  combination  of  labor,  both  of  muscle  and  of 
brains,  which  has  produced  it.  Yet  we  have  to  deal  not 
with  a  single  fabric,  but  with  an  endless  variety  of  the 
products  of  civilization.  What  omniscience  shall  deter- 
mine the  fair  share  of  each  workman  in  the  grand  totality 
of  human  labor? 

The  principle  of  distribution  according  to  wliich  Marx  would  make  the 
time  of  average  or  normal  labor  the  measure  of  value,  is  justly  criticised 
by  the  economists  as  involving  an  arbitrary  standard  of  comparison 
between  different  kinds  of  labor,  and  as  utterly  impracticable.  There  is 
no  common  quantitative  unit  by  means  of  which  skilled  and  unskilled 
labor  can  be  compared.  Physiological  science  furnishes  no  foot-pounds 
of  energy  by  means  of  which  comparison  may  be  made  between  the  labor- 
time  of  the  hod-carrier  and  that  of  the  artist  or  the  manager.  And  if 
we  should  seek  to  find  some  common  measure  in  the  j)leasurableness  or 
painfulness  of  different  kinds  of  work  done,  we  should  have  nothing  but 
a  shifting,  subjective  standard  of  value.  Moreover,  on  this  scale  of 
pleasure  or  pain  in  effort  required,  as  has  justly  been  remarked,  unskilled 
labor  should  be  paid  more  highly  than  skilled  labor.  The  attempt  to 
determine  the  values  of  different  kinds  of  work  in  the  Collective  State, 
and  to  issue  corresponding  labor- checks,  would  require  an  incredible 
amount  of  book-keeping.  The  system  of  distribution  would  have  to  be 
arbitrarily  fixed  by  the  estimates  of  the  management,  and  it  would  need 
to  be  maintained  by  we  know  not  what  force.  The  economic  difficulties, 
not  to  say  impossibilities,  of  any  method  of  distribution  of  products  based 
on  labor- values,  and  measured  by  labor-units  of  time,  are  shown  by  Profes- 
sor Graham  in  his  Socialism,  A>w  and  Old,  pp.  184-215.  On  the  difficulties 
of  distributive  justice  see  also  Sidgwick,  Jlethods  of  Ethics,  pp.  255-260. 


450  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

The  programme  of  socialism  fails  to  show  how  any 
economic  method  of  distribution  can  be  conceived  and 
worked  which  would  do  equal  and  exact  justice  to  all 
individuals,  and  which,  indeed,  though  it  might  escape 
some  evils  of  the  present  rough  method  of  social  utilities, 
would  not  be  exposed  to  new  and  perhaps  worse  injustice 
from  other  consequences  of  it.  Any  standard  which  the 
Collective  All  (or  the  committees  representing  the  col- 
lective wisdom)  might  devise,  would  of  necessity  be 
determined  arbitrarily  and  according  to  some  prevalent 
conception  of  values,  since  there  is  no  real  common  denomi- 
nator for  all  kinds  of  labor ;  and  as  arbitrarily  fixed,  how- 
ever wisely,  it  would  be  exj^osed  to  dissatisfaction  and 
revolution,  and  it  would  need  to  be  made  universal  law  of 
exchange  by  some  omnipresent  force.  We  are  not  denying 
that  the  methods  of  competition  and  exchange  now  in  vogue 
work  grievous  injustice  ;  but  we  are  questioning  whether 
social  justice  could  be  wrought,  whether  new  social  in- 
justice would  not  speedil}^  be  occasioned,  by  any  attempt 
through  collective  authority  to  fix  a  normal  labor-unit,  or 
any  single  conceivable  standard  of  value  in  exchange. 

While  the  programme  of  collectivism  involves  economic 
impracticabilities,  and  the  ethics  of  it  lie  open  to  grave 
doubts  concerning  the  nature  of  the  social  justice  which 
might  flourish  under  its  reign,  nevertheless  socialism  has 
value  as  a  needed  criticism  of  society;  and  its  criticism 
compels  us  to  search  for  more  ethical  principles  by  which, 
under  the  existing  system,  men  should  be  guided  in  the 
division  of  profits  and  in  the  use  of  wealth.  Can  we  for- 
mulate any  ethical  principle  by  means  of  which  the  profits 
of  industry  might  be  more  equitably  shared?  Three 
socialistic  principles  have  been  proposed;  —  to  every  one 
alike  ;  to  every  one  according  to  his  needs ;  to  every  one 
according  to  his  work.  But  would  either  be  a  sufficient 
ethical  distribution?  What  under  perfect  economic  con- 
ditions, in  a  wholly  ethicized  society,  would  be  an  ideal 
distribution  of  goods?  The  first  principle  of  distribu- 
tion, to  all  alike,  would  itself  occasion  an  unequal  distribu- 
tion, because  all  have  not  equal  needs,  or  the  same  capacity 


THE   SOCIAL   PROBLEM   AXD   CHRISTIAN   DUTIES      451 

for  reception  and  ability  to  use  what  is  received ;  heaven 
can  be  no  communism ;  every  cup  will  be  filled,  but  there 
may  be  differences  in  the  sizes  of  the  cups.  The  second 
principle  may  be  charitable,  but  it  is  not  just,  as  needs  are 
no  standard  either  of  service  rendered  or  true  desert. 
The  third  may  be  just,  but  it  is  not  merciful.  In  a  per- 
fect distribution  of  good  justice,  mercy,  and  regard  for 
possible  use  must  be  combined. 

A  Christian  ethical  principle  of  distribution,  w^hich 
would  combine  what  is  true  in  each  of  these  rules,  might 
be  stated  in  the  abstract  as  follows  :  to  each  according  to 
his  power  of  production  and  capacity  of  appropriating  the 
good  of  being,  in  harmony  with  the  same  law  for  all. 

Christian  ethics  may  insist  as  a  regulative  principle 
that  one's  share  in  the  profits  should  bear  a  direct  ratio  to 
his  social  utility .^  A  large  share  in  the  products  of  in- 
dustry imposes  a  large  social  responsibility.  The  ratio  of 
a  man's  productive  obligation  and  social  responsibility 
increases  in  direct  proportion  with  his  means.  Social 
justice  requires  that  this  direct  proportion  be  maintained 
between  the  individual's  social  utility  and  his  share  of  the 
profits  of  civilization.  A  clear  and  intense  perception  of 
this  ethical  principle  of  the  possession  of  property  is  one 
of  the  marked  characteristics  of  the  public  conviction  at 
the  present  time  of  the  responsibilities  of  wealth.  Bishop 
Butler  once  said  that  he  should  be  ashamed  of  himself, 
should  he  die  worth  ten  thousand  pounds.  The  great 
public  are  becoming  more  and  more  impatient  of  the  man 
who  has  accumulated  millions  and  spent  little  or  nothing 
for  the  good  of  the  people.  Great  wealth  is  to  be  esti- 
mated as  an  honor  or  a  reproach  according  to  the  Chris- 
tian law  of  productive  use  and  human  service. 

Martin  Luther  sought  to  fix  a  Christian  rule  for  prices  in  trade  as  fol- 
lows :  "The  tradespeople  have  a  common  rule  among  themselves,  which 
is  their  chief  maxim  and  ground  of  all  finances  ;  that  is  to  say,  I  may  sell 


1  "Do  we  stand  before  a  new  great  day  of  judgment  of  the  history  of  the 
world?  .  .  .  But  one  thing  is  certain:  AVhoever  consumes  rents  without 
corresponding  service,  he  works  to  bring  on  the  judgment."  —  Paulsen,  ojms 
cit.  s.  417. 


452  CHRISTIA^^   ETHICS 

my  wares  as  dearly  as  I  can."  He  insists  that  this  should  not  be  the 
rule,  but  that  one  should  say,  "I  may  sell  my  wares  as  dearly  as  I  ought, 
or  as  is  right  and  just.  .  .  .  For  selling  shall  not  be  a  work  which 
stands  freely  in  your  power,  without  all  law  and  measure  as  though  you 
were  a  god,  who  is  bound  to  no  one  ;  but  because  your  selling  is  a  work 
which  you  do  toward  your  neighbor,  it  shall  be  conducted  with  such  law 
and  conscience  that  you  may  do  it  without  harm  and  injury  to  your 
neighbor.  You  ask,  how  shall  I  find  out  what  is  right  and  fair  ?  .  .  . 
But  now  it  is  fair  and  right  that  a  merchant  shall  gain  as  much  on  his 
wares  as  will  pay  him  for  his  cost,  his  pains,  labor,  and  risk."  He  sug- 
gested that  the  magistrates  might  appoint  suitable  men  to  determine  just 
prices,  but  he  added  that  the  Germans  "  had  so  much  to  do  drinking  and 
dancing,"  that  there  was  no  prospect  that  such  a  rule  would  be  adopted. 
He  therefore  refers  men  for  a  standard  of  prices  to  the  common  market- 
rates  ;  and,  where  there  are  none,  a  man  must  fall  back  on  his  own  con- 
science {Werke^  vol.  x.  Walch'sche Ausg.  ss.  1004  ft'.). 

2.  Socialism  alleges  that  the  present  economic  method 
of  production  by  the  private  ownership  of  the  means  of 
production  is  wrong,  and  necessarily  works  injustice.  It 
attacks  the  present  capitalistic  system  with  a  partial 
theory  of  value  ;  viz.,  value  is  to  be  measured  by  the 
normal  labor  necessary  for  the  production  of  any  article 
of  exchange.  This  premise,  however,  we  leave  to  the 
severe  mercies  of  the  economists.  They  reason  with  hard 
truth  that  value  in  exchange  involves  other  elements  than 
this  simple  theory  of  it  takes  into  the  account ;  that  it  is 
to  be  measured  on  a  more  complex  scale  of  social  estimates 
and  utilities ;  that  it  is  an  economic  fallacy  to  reduce  all 
value  in  exchange  to  a  scale  of  the  labor-time  expended 
in  production.  ^ 

To  the  charge  against  capitalistic  production  economists 
are  prompt  in  replying  that  under  no  scheme  of  collectiv- 
ism can  all  the  productive  energies  of  society  be  called 
forth;  that  without  individual  incentive  and  enterprise 
they  cannot  be  fully  worked.  The  radical  fallacy  of 
socialism  from  the  economic  side  is  that  it  does  not  secure 
those  collective  aims  and  products  of  society  which  are 
the  sum-total  of  the  free  action  of  all  the  individual  forces 
of  society. 

1  See  a  brief  but  clear  statement  on  this  point  in  Rae's  Contemporary 
Socialism,  pp.  150  seq.  On  value,  and  the  fallacy  in  Karl  Marx's  theory  see 
also  Marshall,  Principles  of  Economics,  vol.  i.  pp.  604-31 ;  and  Graham,  opus 
cit.  pp.  138  seq. 


THE   SOCIAL   PROBLEM  AND   CHRISTIAN   DUTIES      453 

"We  have  not  space  to  discuss  the  strictly  economic  difficulties  into 
which  socialistic  schemes  plunge.  Schiiffle  evades  many  of  them  by 
remarking :  "  We  leave  the  practicability  of  socialism  in  abeyance,  as  not 
yet  ripe  for  speech"  {opus  cit.  s.  51).  Among  these  difficulties  maybe 
mentioned  the  trouble  which  socialists  have  in  imagining  a  system  of 
exchange  and  labor-checks,  which  shall  answer  all  purposes  of  distribu- 
tion, and  yet  not  be  liable  in  time  to  the  abuses  of  money,  and  even  to 
the  danger  of  eventually  becoming  capitalized. 

Our  chief  objection,  however,  to  the  productive  pro- 
gramme of  social  collectivism  is  ethical :  it  does  not  give 
enough  space  and  play  to  the  great  law  of  life  and  growth 
that  unto  every  one  that  hath  shall  be  given,  and  he  shall 
have  abundance  ;  nor  does  it  provide  for  the  ethical  judg- 
ment, which  accompanies  this  law  of  growth,  that  from 
him  that  hath  not,  even  that  which  he  hath  shall  be  taken 
away.^  It  may  be  granted  that  this  is  a  severe  law  ;  and 
it  is  not  the  only  law  of  a  divine  economy  of  life  and 
growth  which,  in  its  whole  working,  is  merciful  as  well  as 
just.  But  it  is  one  law  of  life  — it  is  a  biological  law  of 
growth  and  adaptation ;  it  is  a  deep  and  far-reaching  prin- 
ciple of  natural  increase  and  social  advancement.  It 
recognizes  and  gives  room  foi'  the  operation  of  those 
incentives  to  effort  and  those  energies  of  the  human  will 
which  it  is  essential  alike  to  the  perfecting  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  largest  utilities  of  society  to  protect  and 
to  stimulate.  The  economists  reason  from  sound  ethical 
principles  when  they  object  that  the  scheme  of  collec- 
tivism does  not  put  a  legitimate  premium  on  the  social 
worth  of  individual  productive  ability,  and  that  it  involves, 
moreover,  a  distinct  social  wrong  to  fix  by  some  imagined 
and  arbitrary  collective  wisdom  the  incentives  and  the 
rewards  of  effort,  which  should  be  left  to  the  free  play  and 
competitions  of  individual  wills.  .  And  it  may  further  be 
ethically  asserted  against  the  socialists  that,  within  certain 
limits  at  least,  private  capital  has  social  utility,  and  a 
social  right  therefore  to  receive  interest  according  to  its 
productive  virtue. 

AVe  have  admitted  the  value  of  the  criticism  on  society 
which  the  socialistic  literature   has  occasioned,  while  we 

1  Matt.  XXV.  29. 


454  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

have  failed  to  find  in  the  programme  of  the  Collective 
Commonwealth  any  workable  or  even  ideally  just  methods 
of  distribution  and  production,  which  might  be  substi- 
tuted for  the  confessedly  rough  justice  of  social  averages 
in  the  rewards  and  punishments  of  industrial  pursuits 
under  the  law  of  equal  freedom.  There  is  another  and 
fatal  error  in  the  socialist  conception  which  remains  to 
be  noticed. 

3.  The  radical  sociological  defect  of  the  ideal  of  col- 
lectivism is  the  selection  of  a  single  organ  of  the  many 
into  which  society  has  been  differentiated,  and  the  laying 
upon  that  single  organ  the  stress  of  the  whole  social  task. 
This  error  characterizes  theories  of  socialism  in  general ; 
it  marks  fatally  the  ideal  of  collectivism,  which  is  now 
the  leading  socialistic  theory,  and  which  the  word  social- 
ism, unless  otherwise  defined,  may  be  regarded  as  denoting. 

In  socialistic  theories  the  State  is  the  one  social  organ 
selected  to  fulfil  all  the  functions  of  a  perfected  social 
life ;  it  is  to  absorb,  or  at  least  to  control  and  fashion,  all 
the  functions  and  energies  of  industrial,  social,  and  even 
religious  life.  The  Collective  Whole  is  to  be  the  one 
sufficient  organ  for  human  life.  Other  spheres  of  social 
life,  such  as  the  Family,  the  Church,  the  free  Industrial 
Associations,  are  to  be  subordinated  to  the  State,  and  to 
incur  the  risk  at  least  of  social  atrophy. 

Two  serious  difficulties  rise  against  the  expectation  of  a 
social  millennium  from  this  method:  historic  evolution 
gives  us  no  reason  to  suppose  that  any  selected  social 
organ  can  successfully  assume  the  functions  of  other  dif- 
ferentiated social  organs ;  and,  secondly,  even  if  it  could, 
loss,  and  not  gain,  would  follow  from  the  disuse  and 
eventual  atrophy  of  other  social  organs  which  have  been 
historically  differentiated. 

We  have  already  reviewed  the  several  spheres  in 
which  the  moral  ideal  seeks  for  realization ;  and,  we  do 
not  hesitate  to  admit,  it  is  conceivable  that  these  present 
structural  differences  in  the  organization  of  society  may 
in  some  future  age  be  fulfilled  in  social  forms  which 
shall  be  more  finely  and  harmoniously  adapted  to  the  life 


THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  AND   CHRISTIAN  DUTIES      455 

of  another  and  better  world.  But  this  possibility  of 
further  social  development  through  further  differentiations 
and  higher  integrations  is  one  thing ;  the  expectation  of 
attaining  a  perfect  form  and  complete  unity  of  social  life 
through  the  selection  of  some  single  favored  organ  and 
the  disuse  of  others  which  have  been  already  developed, 
is  another  and  very  questionable  hope  of  social  welfare. 

The  tendency  to  minimize  the  social  worth  of  the  family  sphere  is  too 
obvious  in  some  of  the  grosser  socialistic  schemes.  But  Schaffle  contends 
that  socialism  is  not  necessarily  destructive  of  private  life  and  freedom 
{ojms  cit.  ss.  24  ff.).  Granting  that  a  high  estimate  may  still  be  put  on 
the  family  life  in  the  Socialistic  State,  the  question  still  remains  whether 
an  abnormal  development  of  the  collective  power,  and  an  immense 
increase  of  public  administration,  would  not  necessarily  tend  to  atrophy 
of  the  home,  as  well  as  to  the  loss  of  other  free  forms  of  social  culture. 
So  far  as  the  Church  is  concerned,  many  socialists  look  with  complacence 
upon  the  prospect  of  the  disuse  and  eventual  loss  of  any  special  organ  for 
the  religious  life  of  the  people.  If  we  are  reminded  that  we  have  con- 
ceived a  transcendental  unity  of  Church  and  State  to  be  possible,  in  which 
both  of  these  organs  of  society  would  cease  distinctly  to  exist,  we  reply 
that  we  have  not  conceived  the  one  sphere  to  absorb  the  other,  but  rather 
have  admitted  a  future  perfection  to  be  possible  in  which  all  the  present 
forms  of  social  life  shall  be  fulfilled  in  higher  and  more  harmonious  diver- 
sity m  the  unity  of  a  sinless  freedom  before  God. 

The  radical  error  in  this  ideal  consists  in  its  contradic- 
tion of  what  may  be  called  the  biological  law  of  social 
evolution.  It  is  true  that  in  the  development  of  life  some 
organs  may  suffer  extinction  from  disuse;  but  they  fall 
away  only  through  a  process  of  increasing  differentiation ; 
it  would  be  degeneracy  to  return  towards  the  simplicity  of 
the  primitive  sack  of  protoplasm.  And  there  is  far-reach- 
ing scientific  truth,  which  current  theories  of  socialism 
ignore,  in  the  biological  induction  that  the  higher  we  rise 
in  the  scale  of  organization,  the  greater  grows  the  impos- 
sibility of  an  exchange  of  functions  between  different 
organs.^ 

We  have  thus  criticised  the  theories  of  socialism  in  gen- 
eral because  they  seek  to  bring  the  complex  relations   of 

1  "  Where  parts  ai'e  little  differentiated,  they  can,  with  comparative  facility, 
perform  one  another's  functions ;  but  where  much  differentiated  they  can  per- 
form one  another's  functions  very  imperfectly,  or  not  at  all."  —  Herbert 
Spencer,  Socioloay,  p.  50G. 


456  CHKISTIAN   ETHICS 

life  under  some  single,  simple  form,  either  by  reversion  to 
some  former  type,  or  by  tiie  creation  of  some  new  mould 
into  which  all  lives  are  to  be  run.  On  the  contrary,  the 
social  problem  is  not  how  to  simplify  by  removing  contra- 
dictions, but  rather  how  to  reconcile  the  diversities,  and  to 
leave  free  play  for  the  utmost  possible  differentiations  within 
the  unity  of  the  social  organism  ;  and  this  problem  is  not  to 
be  solved  by  a  feat  of  imagination  or  through  a  stroke  of 
revolution. 

In  this  criticism  of  socialism,  however,  we  are  far  from 
denying  that  there  can  be  any  change  in  the  existing  social 
order,  or  that  we  have  reached  in  our  present  industrial 
methods  the  end  of  all  economic  Avisdom.  We  have  much 
reason  to  expect  social  changes  that  may  be  of  greater 
beneficence  than  any  which  mankind  has  ever  witnessed. 
The  next  world-age,  in  its  varied  social  forms  and  happier 
industrial  organization,  may  prove  vastly  superior  to  our 
present  wasteful  system.  No  sober  observer  will  deny  that 
socially  and  economically,  as  well  as  politically  and  relig- 
iously, ours  is  a  transitional  age.  But  the  inductions  of 
social  science  may  assure  us  that  whatever  economic 
changes  are  to  come  about,  we  should  look  for  them,  if 
they  are  to  be  beneficent,  as  a  social  evolution  rather  than 
revolution,  and  that  the  next  larger  and  better  integration 
of  society  will  at  least  provide  for  and  conserve  all  that 
has  been  gained  in  the  present  variety  and  complexity  of 
individual  relations  and  competitions. 

We  have  not  yet  gone,  however,  in  our  criticism  of 
socialistic  ideals  to  the  ethical  source  of  the  evils  which 
give  rise  to  our  present  social  problem.  We  must  con- 
sider further  the  fundamental  question.  What  is  the  cause 
of  the  social  malady  which  must  be  overcome  before  the 
ideal  of  society  can  be  realized? 


III.   THE  ROOT  OF  THE  SOCIAL  PROBLEM  IN  MORAL 

EVIL 

If  we  analyze  some  single  evil  under  which  any  class  of 
men  suffer,  we   shall  discover,  doubtless,   much  in  their 


THE   SOCIAL   PROBLEM  AND  CHEISTIAN  DUTIES      457 

conditions  which  might  be  improved  by  better  environ- 
ment, but  we  shall  also  find  at  the  bottom  of  all  their  cup 
of  w^oe  the  bitter  dregs  of  the  sin  of  the  world. 

In  Charles  Kingsley's  The  Sainfs  Tragedy^  a  story  of  the 
middle  ages,  a  mob  is  represented  as  gathered  around  the 
gateway  of  a  castle,  and  crying,  "  Bread !  Bread !  Bread ! 
give  us  bread ;  we  perish ! "  A  merchant  appears  with 
mules  laden  with  corn.  But  "  the  scoundrel  wants  three 
times  its  value."     He  says  :  — 

"  Not  a  penny  less  — 
I  bought  it  on  speculation  —  I  must  live  — 
I  get  my  bread  by  buying  corn  that's  cheap, 
And  selling  where  'tis  dearest.     jNIass,  you  need  it, 
And  you  must  pay  according  to  your  need." 

Substantially  the  same  principle  still  governs  the  opera- 
tions of  the  grain  market;  when  a  corner  in  wheat  is 
attempted,  the  transaction  might  be  set  to  the  same  harsh 
tune.  It  would,  however,  contradict  the  facts  of  economic 
history  to  imagine  that  the  power  of  the  extortioner  has 
been  proportionally  multiplied  by  the  immense  expansion 
of  the  means  of  distributing  the  product  by  the  use  of 
steam  under  great  capitalized  systems  of  transportation. 
It  is  not  so  easy  amid  our  universal  distribution  to  keep 
any  necessity  of  life  in  any  place  up  to  a  starvation  price. 
Labor  would  gain  nothing  in  the  bread  market  by  aban- 
doning the  modern  railway  system  and  going  back  to  the 
mediaeval  corn  merchant's  mules.  But  the  evil  which  we 
see  is  the  same  spirit  of  greed,  which  works  now  under 
very  different  economic  conditions  for  similar  ends  of 
avarice.  The  evil  is  in  the  devil  of  extortion  which  has 
entered  into  and  possessed  the  speculator,  not  in  the  mules 
or  the  locomotives  which  he  may  use.  The  social  prob- 
lem is,  secondarily,  hoAV  to  provide  better  means  of  dis- 
tribution with  lessening  opportunities  for  extortion ;  but 
ultimately  the  social  question  is  how  to  cast  out  the  devils 
of  greed.  The  moral  evil  cannot  be  gotten  rid  of  simply 
by  changing  the  social  system,  as  muddy  water  cannot  be 
made  pure  simply  by  pouring  it  from  one  bucket  into 
another.     The    moral   filtering   of   society   drop   by   drop 


458  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

from  evil,  is  tlie  social  problem,  the  Christian  task.  We 
are  not  overlooking  the  immense  aid  to  be  sought  in  moral 
reform  from  tlie  improvement  of  the  conditions  of  life, 
and  the  purification  especially  of  the  outward  surround- 
ings of  poverty  and  crime ;  but  we  are  insisting  that  these 
greatly  needed  alleviations  and  helps  themselves  have 
value  as  parts  of,  and  means  for,  the  ethical  renovation  of 
men  ;  and  the  social  aids  and  adjuncts  of  reform  cannot 
be  substituted  for  the  moral  reform  itself,  or  be  regarded 
as  identical  with  the  ethical  task  of  renewing  men.  The 
ultimate  trouble  Avith  civilization  is  not  that  it  has  a 
money-bag,  and  that  some  one  must  carry  it ;  the  real 
question  is  how  to  have  the  bag  cared  for,  and  not  at  the 
same  time  to  make  a  Judas  Iscariot.  How  to  rid  society  of 
the  spirit  of  Judas  Iscariot  is  the  ultimate  social  problem ; 
and  that  is  a  question  of  the  man  rather  than  of  the 
money-bag  ;  it  is  not  so  much  an  economic  as  a  moral  and 
religious  question.  Even  if  we  could  conceive  of  a  society 
organized  without  military  force  to  keep  it  together,  after 
the  pattern  of  Mr.  Bellamy's  twentieth  century  monotony 
of  bliss,  the  moral  problem  would  remain,  how  is  the  spirit 
of  the  betrayer  to  be  kept  far  even  from  such  homogeneous 
masses  of  contentment  ?  how  in  such  an  earthly  paradise 
is  the  entrance  of  the  serpent  to  be  prevented  ?  Industrial 
independence  without  real  moral  freedom,  instead  of  being 
the  attainment  of  the  social  goal,  might  prove  to  be  the 
beginning  of  another  tragedy  of  man's  fall  and  need  of 
redemption. 

Early  Christian  history  has  a  significant  warning  to  give  in  the  evils 
w^hich  quickly  developed  under  the  temporary  socialistic  life  of  the  first 
Christian  Church  in  Jerusalem.  Not  even  the  hands  of  the  apostles  and 
the  special  presence  of  the  Holy  Ghost  could  save  that  primitive  Chris- 
tian society  from  complaints,  or  preserve  it  as  a  model  for  other  churches 
to  imitate.  Selfishness  entered  into  that  early  Christian  socialism  with  a 
miserable  deception.  The  attempt  at  socialistic  self-help  on  the  part  of  a 
community  which  was  united  by  unusual  bonds  of  common  interest,  has 
given  to  history  the  instructive  examples  of  Ananias  and  Sapphira. 
Moreover,  the  first  Jewish-Christian  community  soon  proved  to  be  an 
economic  faihire.  The  poor  Christians  at  Jerusalem  were  helped  by  a 
general  collection  from  the  Gentile  Churches.  There  may  have  been 
special  historical  reasons  for  this  failure  ;   and   it  may  be  argued  that 


THE   SOCIAL   PROBLEM   AND   CHRISTIAN   DUTIES      459 

isolated  socialism  cannot  be  expected  to  succeed,  but  only  national 
collectivism,  or,  indeed,  international  socialism.  But  usually  we  trust 
those  principles  to  show  beneficent  workings  on  a  large  scale  which  have 
proved  themselves  to  be  safe  in  smaller  beginnings. 


IV.   SOCIAL  DUTIES  UXDER  THE  EXISTING  SYSTEM 

In  view  both  of  the  truth  which  may  be  admitted  in  the 
socialistic  arraignment  of  the  present  order,  and  also  of 
the  defects  in  the  ideal  of  collectivism,  and  in  view  like- 
wise of  the  nature  and  moral  causes  of  the  present  social 
problem,  certain  near  and  practical  duties  may  be  urged. 

1.  It  is  a  clear  social  duty  to  recognize  what  is  moral  in 
the  existing  order  of  things.  Whatever  changes  the  next 
world-age  may  bring  to  pass,  whatever  social  judgments 
may  be  impending,  the  way  of  social  progress  is  still 
marked  by  the  old  virtues  of  frugality,  honesty,  temper- 
ance, industry,  fidelity,  and  honor.  A  genuine  social  reform 
will  appeal  to  the  deep  moral  consciousness  of  the  people. 

2.  Following  upon  this  first  social  obligation  of  recog- 
nizing the  good  even  amid  things  evil,  is  the  further  social 
duty  of  making  the  best  possible  use  of  the  ethical  powers 
of  the  present  order.  The  immediate  and  often  pressing 
social  obligation  is  to  work  to  the  utmost  the  good,  which 
we  may  lay  hold  of,  against  the  evil  before  us  which  should 
not  be  tolerated.  They  are  the  real  leaders  of  men,  the 
genuine  reformers,  the  moral  prophets  whom  it  is  safe  to 
follow,  who,  while  greeting  with  cheerful  optimism  the 
promise  of  the  better  day  that  is  to  come,  strive  to  call 
forth  and  to  marshal  for  immediate  ends  the  reserved 
powers  of  righteousness  and  love  which  are  now  ready  to 
work  together  for  the  good  of  the  community.  Such  men 
are  not  destroyers,  neither  are  they  dreamers ;  but  they 
are  makers  and  builders,  and  their  works  remain. 

With  these  strong  and  healthful  social  upbuilders  one  may  contrast  the 
social  democrats  in  their  propliesyings  of  the  destruction  of  the  whole 
order  of  the  world.  Destroy  first,  some  say  ;  then  build  up.  But  Sam- 
son's method  of  bringing  the  feast  of  the  rich  Philistine  lords  to  an 
end  by  pulling  the  whole  house  down  upon  them,  even  though  he  was 
buried  himself  at  the  bottom  of  the  heap,  may  afford  an  heroic  instance  of 
retribution  ;  it  is  not  meant,  however,  as  a  biblical  model  of  social  reform. 


460  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

3.  Together  with  these  immediate  social  duties,  is  the 
obligation  to  seek  along  all  practical  lines  the  further 
ethical  development  of  the  existing  social  system.  Indus- 
trial measures  and  proposed  legislation,  which  may  approve 
themselves  as  practical  means  for  tlie  advancement  of  any 
class  of  men,  are  not  to  be  at  once  rejected  because  they 
may  be  chargeable  with  socialistic  tendencies.  Many  such 
ideas  may  fall  within  the  lines  of  the  legitimate  develop- 
ment of  existing  institutions  ;  the  criterion  to  be  applied 
to  any  new  measure  is  its  probable  social  efficiency. 

In  determining  whether  a  new  method  of  business  or  an 

o 

act  of  legislation  is  likely  thus  to  prove  efficient,  we  are  to 
inquire  into  its  conformity  with  the  social  laws  which  are 
to  be  derived  from  the  inductions  of  history  and  economic 
science.  Social  teleology,  or  the  adaptation  of  proposed 
measures  to  the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number 
according  to  the  known  processes  of  social  law,  is  the  sole 
practical  measure  of  ethical  judgment  in  questions  of 
public  policy  and  legislation.  It  is  not  an  infallible  rule, 
but  it  is  the  best  wisdom  given  us  to  follow  in  finding  our 
way,  step  by  step,  towards  the  promised  land. 

For  example,  if  the  public  ownership  of  any  particular  form  of 
industry,  such  as  the  postal  service,  the  telegraph,  municipal  water- 
works, a  railway  system,  or  other  object  of  common  necessity,  can  be 
shown  on  the  whole  to  be  good;  if  it  can  be  demonstrated  that  the  secur- 
ity of  other  interests  of  the  people  require  the  public  administration 
of  a  particular  industry,  and  that  it  can  thus  be  more  efficiently  man- 
aged in  the  long  run  for  the  public  good  to  which  it  is  essential,  —  then, 
provided  these  reasonings  are  sound,  no  mere  theory  of  liberty  should 
debar  the  State  from  assuming  such  responsibility  ;  as,  on  the  other  hand, 
no  mere  theory  of  paternal  government  should  lead  the  State  to  make 
haste  to  interfere  unnecessarily  with  private  enterprise. 

So  sober  an  economist  as  Mr.  Marshall,  in  speaking  of  governmental 
intervention,  leaves  it  as  an  open  question  whether  it  is  "necessary  to 
retain  in  their  full  force  all  the  existing  rights  of  property  "  {opus  cit. 
p.  97). 

Our  ethical  obligation  is  not  to  take  the  kingdom  of 
social  good  by  violence,  nor  to  give  up  effort  to  reach  it, 
but  rather  to  follow  the  good  which  becomes  practical  from 
one  point  to  the  next  in  the  way  of  human  advancement. 


THE   SOCIAL   PEOBLEM   AND   CHRISTIAN   DUTIES      461 

The  ethics  of  social  questions  is  not  an  ethics  of  the  chair, 
but  of  real  life  and  its  fruits. 

Nor  is  it  usually  difHcult  to  find  in  any  community  the 
next  social  good  to  be  attained.  No  country  lacks  causes 
for  immediate  reforms.  Social  science  shows  to  sober 
intelligence  enough  good  waiting,  just  beyond  present 
customs  and  laws,  to  be  accomplished.  To  reach  the 
social  aims  which  are  alread}^  clearly  in  sight,  requires  the 
energy  and  devotion  of  all  good  citizens,  and  it  is  not 
sound  moral  sense  to  waste  the  vitality  needed  for  imme- 
diate work  in  a  propagandism  of  social  dreams.  We  may 
indeed  take  heart  from  prophetic  visions  of  some  future 
world-age  ;  but  while  that  which  is  best  for  man  tai'ries, 
the  next  better  things  demand  our  devotion,  and  become 
in  their  time  our  supreme  social  duties.  If  the  ethics  of 
the  social  problem  seems  thus  to  bring  us  down  to  near 
and  commonplace  efforts,  we  should  remember  that  the 
law  of  gaining  many  things  through  fidelity  to  few  things 
obtains  as  truly  for  society  as  for  the  individual ;  and  all 
sound  social  progress  follows  this  divine  law  of  life.  Nor 
would  the  amount  of  social  progress  in  any  centre  of 
population  be  inconsiderable  if  good  citizens  generally 
kept  a  vigilant  eye  upon  the  immediate  and  clear  social 
and  governmental  requirements  of  the  community. 

The  definition  which  we  have  already  given  of  the 
nature  of  our  social  problem  indicates  further  certain 
directions  in  which  we  may  find  immediate  and  urgent 
social  tasks. 

4.  Our  present  social  duties  plainly  require  us  to  resist 
in  all  practical  ways  the  tendency  to  industrial  disintegra- 
tion, and  to  throw  our  personal  influence  in  with  the 
powers  that  make  for  a  better  social  integration.  We  have 
already  distinguished  a  social  integration,  which  shall  be 
comprehensive  of  all  the  differences  gained  by  social 
evolution,  from  the  attempt  to  reduce  society  to  a  uniform 
solid  under  the  pressure  of  socialism ;  Ave  now  assert, 
without  fear  of  being  socialistic,  that  certain  disinte- 
grating tendencies  of  this  capitalistic  age  need  to  be 
checked  in   the   public   interest,  and  that  it  is  an  urgent 


462  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

social  duty  to  help  on  Avhatever  may  serve  to  bind  class 
interests  together  in  a  larger  human  unity.  Nor  are  some 
means  to  this  end  far  to  seek.  Nature  under  her  iron 
laws  counteracts  to  some  extent  the  accumulation  of  capi- 
tal as  an  increasing  family  inheritance  ;  there  seem  to  be 
natural  laws  for  the  distribution  of  wealth  in  the  third  or 
fourth  generation,  as  well  as  for  its  accumulation  from 
father  to  son.  But  as  nature's  first  principle  is  to  leave 
room  for  the  play  of  human  freedom  for  worse  as  well  as 
better,  we  cannot  trust  the  remedy  of  the  self-created  evils 
of  society,  as  the  laissez  faire  economists  would  do,  en- 
tirely to  the  severe  benignities  of  natural  laws.  There  is 
scientific  social  work  to  be  done  both  in  keeping  the 
avenues  of  preferment  wide  open  to  individual  talent  and 
enterprise,  and  also  in  restricting  the  accumulation  and 
use  of  wealth  to  an  extent  which  threatens  the  public 
welfare.  The  ethics  of  the  social  question  requires  the 
application  of  social  science  to  the  laws  of  inheritance, 
and  the  prevention  of  the  abuses  of  monopolies  and  of  the 
accumulation  under  private  ownership  of  the  means  of  pro- 
duction of  necessary  things  beyond  the  point  where  the  free- 
dom which  is  requisite  for  the  development  of  productive 
enterprise  may  become  dangerous  to  the  life  of  the  people. 

It  lies  somewhat  beyond  our  province  to  discuss  particular  measures 
for  this  end,  such  as  a  progressive  income  tax,  or  a  graduated  tax  on 
inheritance.  The  single  tax  idea,  advocated  by  Mr.  George,  must  succeed 
in  demonstrating,  as  it  has  not  done,  its  economic  soundness,  before  we 
need  raise  the  moral  question  how  under  existing  conditions  could  it 
ethically  be  carried  out.  With  regard  to  monopolies  and  trusts,  the 
legitimate  use  of  them,  their  actual  or  possible  social  utility,  needs  to  be 
defined,  in  order  that  their  abuses  may  be  restricted. 

In  the  fifteenth  century  trading-societies  and  bankers,  like  the  rug- 
gers, began  to  control  and  to  absorb  the  profits  of  the  newly  opened  com- 
merce of  the  East ;  with  regard  to  their  methods  and  abuses  Martin 
Luther  expressed  his  scruples  with  his  wonted  Christian  vigor.  "They 
oppress,"  he  said,  "and  destroy  all  smaller  tradespeople,  as  the  pike 
does  the  little  fish  in  the  water ;  just  as  though  they  were  lords  over  all 
God's  creatures,  and  free  from  all  laws  of  faith  and  love.  .  .  .  How 
shall  it  ever  be  godly  and  right  that  a  man  in  so  short  a  time  becomes  so 
rich  that  he  might  buy  out  kings  and  kaisers?  "  After  describing  their 
extortionate  ways,  which  were  very  similar  to  some  methods  of  modern 
monopolies,  he  exclaims;  "  What  wonder  is  it  that  they  become  kings, 


THE   SOCIAL   PROBLEM   AND    CHRISTIAN   DUTIES      463 

and  we  beggars?"  Their  operations  produced  instability  in  prices,  to 
which  he  alludes  as  follows  :  "An  everlastingly  sure  penny  is  worth 
more  than  a  temporary  uncertain  gulden.  Now  such  bands  do  not  ex- 
change their  everlastingly  sure  gulden  for  our  temporary  uncertain  pen- 
nies." He  denounced  these  monopolists  with  genuine  socialistic  indig- 
nation: "These  people  are  not  worthy  of  being  called  men,  or  dwelling 
among  people.  ...  It  would  be  right  for  the  magistracy  to  take 
from  such  all  that  they  have,  and  to  drive  them  from  the  land.  .  .  . 
If  these  bands  remain,  justice  and  honesty  will  perish  ;  shall  justice  and 
honesty  remain,  these  bands  must  peri.ih.  The  bed  is  too  narrow,  says 
Esaias,  one  must  fall  out,  and  the  coverlid  is  too  small  to  cover  both." 
These  citations  are  from  Luther's  Bedenken  von  Kavfshandlung.  Much 
more  of  interest  concerning  the  customs  of  trade  and  the  application  of 
the  ethics  of  the  Reformation  to  business,  is  to  be  found  in  Luther's  Von 
Uhertreihiing  wi  Handel  und  Wandel  (Werke,  Walch'sche  Ausg.  vol.x.). 
To  the  words  above  quoted  INIartensen  adds  in  his  reference  to  Luther's 
view  of  monopolies  this  sentence:  "A  bridle  must  be  put  into  the 
mouth  of  the  Fuggers  and  all  such  societies  (Christian  Ethics  (Social), 
vol.  ii.  p.  141).  For  this  remark,  and  also  Luther's"  view  of  interest  as 
invented  by  the  devil,  and  sanctioned  by  the  pope  to  the  harm  of  all  the 
world,  see  An  den  Christ.  Adel  (Erl.  Ausg.  21,  357).  "Bridling  the 
Fuggers  "  comes  nearer  the  right  view  to  be  taken  of  monopolies  than 
some  of  Luther's  more  vigorous  denunciations  of  their  evils  ;  for  the  social 
thing  now  to  be  done  is  to  bridle  monopolies  for  the  public  service.  They 
are  powers  to  be  bridled  and  used  rather  than  driven  out  of  civilization. 

Within  the  spheres  of  private  industry  and  personal 
endeavor  much  service  may  be  rendered  in  binding  men 
more  helpfully  and  happily  together;  and  in  these  re- 
lations there  is  no  social  obligation  more  constant  or 
imperative.  Every  manufacturer,  every  business  man,  has 
opportunity  and  divine  calling  within  his  own  private 
business  to  serve  the  highest  interests  of  society.  The 
social  obligations  of  men  to  men  in  their  industries  are 
not  to  be  left  out  of  the  account  as  though  they  belonged 
only  to  some  conscienceless  and  loveless  domain  of  eco- 
nomics, and  not  to  the  world  of  God's  love.  Whatever  in 
the  conduct  of  private  business  experience  commends  as 
profitable  to  prevent  the  proletarizing  of  a  laboring  class, 
becomes  an  ethical  responsibility  and  a  Christian  duty  of 
the  administrator  and  the  capitalist.  The  use  and  devo- 
tion of  wealth  to  the  broadest  and  highest  human  utilities 
is  the  supreme  social  obligation  of  the  rich,  Avhich  justice 
requires  aiid  which  love  expects.  In  the  accumulation 
and  use  of  property,  as  well  as  in  the  direction  of  it  by 


464  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

bequests,  the  question  which  Martin  Luther  askecl  the 
rich  is  still  very  much  to  the  point,  "  What  at  last  will 
God  say  about  it  ?  " 

V.   THE   DUTIES  OF   THE  CHURCHES  CONCERNING  THE 
SOCIAL  QUESTION 

The  Christian  Church  carries  in  itself  the  idea  of  the 
true  society  in  which  dwelleth  righteousness  and  wherein 
nothing  hurts  or  makes  afraid.  But  so  long  as  society  is 
burdened  with  oppressions,  rent  into  classes,  and  pervaded 
with  injustice  ;  so  long  as  whole  areas  of  human  life  are 
left  in  gloom  and  joylessness,  and  many  toil  without  light 
or  hope,  the  Christian  ideal  of  society  tarries,  and  the 
social  mission  of  the  Church  of  the  Son  of  man  remains 
unfulfilled. 

1.  It  is  the  obvious  obligation  of  the  Christian  Church, 
therefore,  not  to  stand  idly  by  as  an  indifferent  spectator 
of  the  social  questions  of  the  day.  In  fidelity  to  itself  as 
the  heir  of  Christ's  Spirit  and  the  possessor  of  the  promise 
of  his  gospel,  the  Church  must  seek  to  enter  into  all 
human  relations,  and  to  form  and  reform  in  social  truth 
and  justice,  and  in  the  hope  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven, 
every  successive  industrial  age  and  the  entire  economy  of 
the  world.  The  pulpit  has  a  divine  call  to  champion  the 
rights  of  men,  and  to  rebuke  the  wrongs  which  crush 
the  hopes  of  the  people.  The  preacher  of  the  gospel 
must  be  the  fearless  friend  of  the  poor  and  the  down- 
trodden. The  Church  as  a  Church,  in  loyalty  to  the 
gospel  of  the  Son  of  man,  Avill  stand  avowedly  for  all  just 
causes.  No  Christian  man  has  received  by  family  privi- 
lege, wealth,  or  culture,  a  reserved  place  in  the  Church  of 
God  where  he  may  quietly  sit  as  a  spectator  and  criticise 
the  whole  action  and  passion  of  human  life.  An  ancient 
Hebrew  psalm  used  some  plain  words  concerning  those 
who  sit  in  the  seat  of  the  scornful ;  it  is  our  more  refined 
modern  sin  to  sit  in  the  seat  of  the  socially  indifferent ; 
and  when  in  the  world's  great  arena  we  see  so  many 
wrongs  striving  to  be  made  right,  and  great  works  of  faith 


THE   SOCIAL  PROBLEM  AND   CHRISTIAN  DUTIES      465 

are  to  be  done  to  bring  the  lives  of  whole  classes  of  men 
to  happier  issues,  we  can  imagine  what  the  voice  in  the 
modern  pulpit  of  an  old-time  prophet  of  the  Lord  would 
be,  could  he  look  up  from  the  thick  of  the  struggle  to  the 
reserved  seats  of  piety,  wealth,  and  education,  and  glance 
at  the  complacent  rows  of  decorous  spectators  of  Chris- 
tianity. It  is  one  of  the  inspiring  spiritual  signs  of  our 
times  that  the  Church  of  Christ  is  rising  to  the  greatness 
and  nobleness  of  its  social  mission  in  Christ's  name.  The 
ecclesiastical  form  of  religion  is  already  quickened,  and 
becoming  filled  anew  with  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord,  so  that 
it  shall  represent  the  Messianic  hope  of  the  people.  The 
prophets  and  heralds  of  the  coming  age  of  a  powerful 
social  Christianity  are  everywhere  finding  voice  and  heart. 
The  flood  of  the  new  reformation  of  the  Lord's  gospel  of 
social  salvation  is  gathering  volume  and  strength  from 
heaven,  and  shall  sweep  all  our  churches  out  from  their 
sheltered  coves  and  shallows  into  its  broad  and  sunny 
humanity. 

Li  our  Christian  passion  for  humanity  we  may  not 
forget,  however,  for  a  moment,  that  love  works  in  truth. 
There  must  be  clear  light  as  well  as  zeal  in  Christian 
philanthropy. 

2.  A  second  duty  of  the  Church,  consequently,  is  the 
patient  and  practical  study  of  sociological  principles  and 
laws.  Sound  education  in  sociology  is  becoming  more 
than  ever  an  indispensable  part  of  education  for  the  min- 
istry of  the  Church.  Scientific  methods  of  investigation 
of  the  causes  and  tendencies  which  produce  poverty  and 
crime  and  the  waste  of  civilization,  must  furnish  the 
material  for  the  moral  flame  of  the  pulpit.  The  social 
duty  of  the  Church  is  to  give  practical  effectiveness,  by  all 
its  energies  of  consecrated  service,  to  the  best  scientific 
methods  of  draining  the  sources  of  human  misery  and 
reclaiming  the  waste  places  of  life.  The  Church  is  to 
represent  the  most  enlightened  social  conscience  in  the 
high  places  of  power ;  hence  those  who  are  called  to  give 
voice  to  the  conscience  of  Christian  love  from  the  pulpit 
or  in  the  halls  of  legislature,  particularly  need  the  clear 


466  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

and  steady  intelligence  which  can  be  gained  only  through 
patient  and  prolonged  study  of  sociology.  By  its  pro- 
found interest  in  men  for  Christ's  sake,  the  Church  must 
be  studious  not  to  be  mistaken  in  its  appeals  for  social 
legislation. 

3.  The  present  duty  of  the  Church  in  relation  to  social 
questions  within  its  special  sphere,  and  so  far  as  concerns 
the  active  exercise  of  its  own  powers  of  doing  good  to  all 
classes,  should  be  positively  urged.  The  true  idea  of  the 
Church  in  its  relation  to  society  is  expressed  in  that  terse 
phrase  by  which  of  old  an  apostle  defined  the  aim  of  his 
missionary  life:  "I  am  become  all  things  to  all  men,  that 
I  may  by  all  means  save  some."  ^  No  nobler  name  for  a 
church  could  be  written  over  its  porch  than  this  :  "  The 
Church  of  All  Things  to  All  Men  for  the  GospeVs  Sake.'' 

With  some  statesmanlike  foresight  and  adaptation  of  its 
forms  to  the  needs  of  different  classes  of  men,  a  true 
church  will  seek  to  minister  from  its  own  radiant  centre 
in  all  directions  of  good  to  the  community  in  the  midst  of 
which  it  exists.  The  Church  which  shall  worthily  fulfil 
its  social  mission  will  be  within  itself  a  well-ordered 
organization  of  all  helpful  Christian  works  and  philan- 
thropies. It  will  be  a  place  for  the  preaching  of  the 
Word,  and  a  house  of  prayer;  it  will  be  also,  and  because 
it  is  these,  a  thoroughly  equipped  institute  of  humanity. 
The  modern  Church,  organizing  thus  all  Christian  human- 
ities and  philanthropies  in  its  own  spiritual  power,  will 
represent  in  the  moral  sphere  what  the  principle  of  com- 
bination represents  in  the  commercial  world  or  on  the 
railway  map.  It  will  become  the  strong  and  firm  centre 
around  which  different  industrial  groups  may  be  gathered 
and  harmonized.  It  will  thus  be  a  permanent  as  well  as 
powerful  force  of  true  social  development. 

In  the  fulfilment  of  its  supreme  social  task  the  Church 
may  represent,  as  in  all  its  teachings  and  customs  it  should 
illustrate,  the  larger  and  higher  human  interests  and 
relationships  in  which  the  lives  of  individuals  may  be 
socially  completed.     These  great  human  concerns  are  the 

1 1  Cor.  ix.  22. 


THE    SOCIAL   PROBLEM   AND   CHRISTIAN   DUTIES      467 

social  multiples  of  the  individual  life.  Our  private  lives 
are  to  be  multiplied  with  others  in  the  universal  welfare. 
The  Church  is  to  represent  this  possible  enlargement  of 
life  in  the  multiplications  of  God's  gracious  providences. 
Its  communion  in  the  love  of  God  is  the  largest  multiple, 
the  highest  enhancement,  of  life.  And  from  the  fulness 
of  God's  love  for  the  whole  world  the  Church  looks  for 
the  dawn  of  the  better  world-age  to  come.  Only  the  Sun 
of  Righteousness  can  illumine  all.  The  little  lights  in 
the  friendly  windows  of  our  human  homes  shine  but 
intermittently  along  the  way,  and  the  darkness  closes 
again  around  the  torches  of  every  passing  procession  of 
reform ;  the  Church  looks  with  earnest  expectation,  and 
waits  in  hope  for  the  day  of  the  Lord,  in  which  there  shall 
be  no  more  curse  upon  labor,  and  no  more  night  for  de- 
spairing men. 


CHAPTER  V 

DUTIES   TOWARDS   GOD 

In  the  Old  Testament  specific  duties  towards  God  are 
enjoined.  Not  only  was  the  whole  Hebrew  conception  of 
duty  a  religious  conception,  all  sin  being  regarded  as  a 
trespass  against  God,^  and  all  righteousness  a  walking  in 
God's  ways,2  but  also  specific  acts,  states  of  mind,  and 
motions  of  the  heart  were  required  as  duties  which  Israel 
owed  to  the  Lord  its  God.  Jehovah  was  not  indefinitely 
and  vaguely  conceived  as  "the  power  that  makes  for 
righteousness  "  (according  to  Matthew  Arnold's  uncritical 
interpretation  of  the  Hebrew  literature),  but  He  is  the 
living  God,  to  whom  are  to  be  rendered  duties  specific  as 
the  offering  of  praise  and  sacrifice,  the  confession  of  sin, 
the  acknowledgment  of  benefits,  prayer,  and  acts  of 
obedience,  as  well  as  the  more  general  obligations  of  fear, 
submission,  and  waiting  on  the  Lord.^ 

In  the  New  Testament  true  life,  according  to  Jesus 
Christ,  is  the  doing  the  will  of  the  Father.  All  morality 
is  set  in  a  religious  obligation ;  every  duty  towards  man 
is  fulfilment  of  the  one  obligation  of  our  life  towards 
God.  Religion  might  be  said  to  be  the  Godward  side  of 
morality,  and  morality  the  manward  side  of  religion. 
This  simple  and  pervasive  view  of  life  as  in  all  things 
a  pleasing  God,  does  not  exclude,  however,  from  the  teach- 
ing of  Jesus  and  the  disciples  the  mention  of  certain 
specific  acts  as  duties  directly  owed  to  God.  Prayer  and 
thanksgiving,  obedience  and  trust,  and  love  in  the  highest, 

1  Num.  V.  6.  2  Deut.  xxiv.  16-10. 

81  Chron.  xvi.  8,  11,  28,  29  ;  Deut.  vi.  5,  13  ;  x.  12  ;  Ps.  xxvii.  14  ;  Is.  Iv.  6,  7; 
Hos.  xiv.  2  ;  etc. 
468 


DUTIES    TOWARDS    GOD  4G9 

are  to  be  offered  to  God  our  Father,  and  the  Father  of  our 
Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ. ^ 

The  admission  into  ethics  of  a  special  class  of  duties  towards  God  has 
not  only  been  refused  by  philosophical  moralists,  like  Kant,  but  also  for 
a  different  reason  it  has  been  regarded  as  an  improper  classification  of 
duties  by  theological  writers  like  Rothe.  It  is  urged  either  that,  because 
all  duties  are  religious,  no  special  duties  towards  God  need  to  be  dis- 
tinguished, or  that,  because  God  is  unknown,  and  not  directly  the  object 
of  our  moral  action,  we  cannot  properly  speak  of  duties  towards  Him, 

liotlie,  proceeding  from  the  teleological  relation  towards  the  moral 
end,  by  which  a  manner  of  acting  is  determined,  held  that  there  are  but 
two  moral  ends  to  which  action  may  be  related,  and  consequently  but 
two  general  categories  of  duty,  viz.,  the  individual  and  the  universal  moral 
end ;  and  consequently  he  recognized  only  the  self-duties  and  the  social 
duties.  (Theol.  Ethik,  v.  iii.  §  857.)  He  proceeds  to  argue  at  length 
against  the  ordinary  threefold  division  in  which  duties  towards  God  are 
co-ordinated  with  duties  towards  self  and  others.  His  objections  are  two  ; 
first,  that  it  is  unethical  to  define  a  duty  by  its  object,  and  not  by  refer- 
ence to  its  moral  end ;  and,  secondly,  that  our  duties  have  indeed  essen- 
tially a  relation  to  the  end  of  God,  but  that  since  they  all  have  this 
relation,  and  all  have  it  essentially,  there  is  no  place  for  a  special  cate- 
gory of  religious  duties.  Rothe  rejects  the  Kantian  reasoning  that  we 
cannot  speak  of  duties  towards  God  because  He  is  not  an  object  of  our 
moral  action,  rightly  maintaining  that  in  a  true  ethical  sense  God  may  be 
regarded  as  the  object  of  our  action  ;  but  he  would  drop  entirely  the 
logical  category  of  daty  towards  any  object  as  confusing. 

We  have  already  admitted  the  truth  of  Rothe's  reasoning  so  far  as  to 
modify  the  ordinary  classification  of  duties  in  the  text-books  by  adding 
to  the  definition  of  the  objects  towards  which  our  act;on  may  be  directed, 
the  ethical  idea  also  of  the  relation  of  our  action  towards  those  objects  as 
moral  ends  (p.  32-1).  But  admitting  this  reference  to  moral  ends  in  all 
duties,  we  see  no  sufficient  reason  why  the  ordinary  objective  categories 
of  duties  as  duties  in  respect  to  self,  in  regard  to  others,  and  in  relation 
to  God  should  not  stand.  It  is  a  convenient  classification,  and  it  corre- 
sponds to  distinctions  of  objects  which  in  some  way  must  be  recognized 
in  the  survey  of  our  duties.  An  action  which  has  for  its  immediate  object 
the  relief  of  some  necessity  of  another,  or  the  immediate  satisfaction  of 
some  felt  want  of  one's  self,  is  certainly  objectively  to  be  distinguished 
from  an  action  which  seeks  God  for  the  sake  of  offering  to  Him  grateful 
recognition,  or  intercessory  prayer.  Rothe  introduces  all  that  is  ordi- 
narily summarized  as  duty  towards  God  under  the  "Religious  Means  of 
Virtue,"  and  also  under  the  "Duty  to  educate  One's  Self,"  especially  to 


1  Jesus  taught  his  disciples  to  pray,  "  Our  Father  who  art  in  heaven  "  ;  to 
keep  the  commandments  which  are  summed  up  in  love  to  God  and  one's  neigh- 
bor; and  in  general  to  render  unto  God  the  things  that  are  God's.  Specific 
duties  towards  God  are  commended  in  the  Epistles:  Col.  i.  12  ;  1  John  iii.  22; 
Eph.  vi.  18;  Rom.  xii.  1;  2  Cor.  v.  20;  Heb.  xiii.  15;  etc.  See  also  Tit.  ii. 
12,  where  a  threefold  obligation  of  life  seems  to  be  assumed. 


470  CHKISTIAN    ETHICS 

"a  virtuous  piety."  But  in  this  religious  virtue,  aucl  in  these  means 
of  grace,  there  is  always  a  relation  not  only  to  the  supreme  end  of  God's 
will,  but  also  to  God  himself  as  the  object  of  love, — to  God  as  revealed 
in  Christ  as  the  object  of  personal  devotion,  — a  relation  of  which  liothe 
was  not  unmindful,  although  it  hardly  fits  into  his  ethical  scheme. 

Our  duties  in  relation  to  God  as  the  Supreme  End  may 
be  considered  in  view  of  two  general  aspects  of  God's  rela- 
tion to  us :  He  is  the  unknown  One,  and  He  is  the  known 
God ;  hence  we  have  duties  in  relation  to  God  both  as  the 
unrevealed  and  as  the  revealed  God. 


I.   DUTIES   IN   RELATION   TO   THE   UNKNOWN   GOD 

The  question  will  at  once  be  raised,  How  can  we  have 
any  obligations  towards  an  object  which  is  unknown  ?  And 
this  objection  against  the  whole  obligation  of  religion  has 
become  familiar  in  modern  literature.  But  shall  modern 
agnosticism  build  no  altar  to  an  unknown  God  ? 

Kant's  reason  for  excluding  from  philosophical  ethics  duties  towards 
God  was  this:  "Duty  towards  God  is  a  transcendent  duty,  i.e.  such  an 
one  that  no  corresponding  outward  obligatory  subject  can  be  given  to  it 
{Metapliysik  der  Sitten,  s.  43);  a  duty  "wherein  our  whole  immanent  duty 
consists  only  in  the  thought  relations  "  (^Ihid.  s.  49).  "Duty  towards  God 
is  duty  towards  man  himself,  i.e.  not  objectively  the  obligation  of  render- 
ing certain  services 'towards  another,  but  only  subjectively  of  strength- 
ening the  moral  motive  in  our  own  law-giving  reason"  {Ibid.  s.  333). 
Duties  towards  God  are  not  "a  ^wiori  cognizable,  but  only  empirically 
as  duties  pertaining  to  revealed  religion"  {Ibid.  s.  33). 

We  proceed  to  consider  in  what  sense  duty  towards  God 
as  unknown  may  be  enjoined,  or  what  religious  obligation 
should  be  admitted  by  an  agnostic. 

Obviously,  if  an  object  be  regarded  as  absolutely  un- 
known, to  speak  of  an  obligation  imposed  by  it  would  be  a 
contradiction  in  terms.  It  must  be  known  at  least  as  an 
object  of  thought,  or  as  a  possibility  of  existence,  although 
beyond  our  finite  power  of  comprehension,  if  we  are  to 
speak  of  it  at  all,  or  to  raise  any  question  concerning  it. 
An  agnosticism,  however,  which  accepts  ignorance  of  God 
as  a  necessity  of  our  finiteness,  does  not  necessarily  go  so 
far  as  to  exclude  the  idea  of  an  infinite  Power,  or  an  ulti- 


DUTIES   TOWARDS   GOD  471 

mate  Force,  or  an  eternal  Somewhat,  the  idea  of  which 
may  be  used,  like  a  symbol  for  an  unknown  quantity,  in 
the  solution  of  the  problems  of  the  uniA^erse.  In  other 
words,  agnosticism  is  not  necessarily  atheism,  or  an  attempt 
of  the  idea  of  causation  to  commit  felo  de  se  in  atheism. 

We  may  speak  consequently  of  an  intellectual  obligation 
to  the  idea  of  the  Unknown  Power,  which  reason  admits 
in  its  endeavor  to  think  out  the  law  of  causation  and  to 
construe  intelligibly  the  processes  of  the  universe.  This 
intellectual  obligation  would  require,  for  example,  con- 
sistency and  truth  in  dealing  with  the  symbol  of  the  un- 
known in  the  equations  which  science  forms  for  the  solu- 
tion of  the  problem  of  existence.  It  is  not  to  be  trifled 
with  —  to  be  introduced  into  the  argument  when  hard 
pressed,  and  to  be  quietly  cancelled  when  its  presence 
might  encumber  the  process.  Acknowledgment  of  it  is  to 
run  through  all  the  evolutionary  reasoning;  the  possible 
existence  of  another  and  greater  factor  in  the  mechanics 
of  the  worlds  and  the  development  of  life,  is  to  be  kept 
open  in  every  formula  Avhich  may  be  deduced  as  law  and 
proclaimed  as  positive  science.  We  conceive,  therefore, 
that  there  is  an  obligation  of  severe  and  consistent  truth 
to  be  rendered  even  to  the  idea  of  the  Unknown  God. 

This  intellectual  attitude  will  render  necessary,  further, 
corresponding  moral  conditions.  It  cannot  be  maintained 
without  reverence.  The  mystery  of  life  naturally  awakens 
the  feeling  of  awe  ;  wisdom  is  a  growing  wonder ;  but  the 
reverence  which  is  due  the  idea  of  the  Unknown  God  is 
more  than  a  vague  consciousness  of  the  mystery  of  being ; 
it  is  voluntary,  intelligent  submission  of  mind  to  the  idea 
of  a  Truth  beyond  its  logic,  and  a  Power  above  the  mas- 
tery of  our  science.  In  the  thought  of  an  unrevealed  God 
there  may  be  rendered  a  reverence  of  spirit,  and  an  obe- 
dience of  the  intellect,  which  shall  be  as  the  fear  of  the 
Lord  in  which  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom. 

Consequent  upon  this  habitual  attitude  of  reverent  intel- 
lect will  be  still  further  an  earnest  waiting  of  mind  upon 
the  Unknown  God  which  will  ethically  be  like  that  waiting 
on  the  Lord  which  was  a  virtue  of  the    Hebrew  religious 


472  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

faith.  It  is  alwcaj^s  possible  that  the  Unknown  may  be- 
come more  and  more  known  in  the  processes  of  things. 
Evolution  may  be  revelation ;  and  man  standing  at  the 
height  and  in  the  glory  of  a  finished  course  of  cosmic 
evolution  may  know  the  Unknown,  as  prophets  on  lower 
heiglits  and  with  dimmer  light  of  reason  could  not  have 
gained  vision  of  the  Eternal.  And  though  the  end  be  far 
from  us,  the  revelation  may  be  brightening  as  the  evolu- 
tion is  ascending ;  therefore  waiting  on  the  Lord  should 
be  part  of  the  agnostic's  religious  creed. 

Still  further  obligations  of  trust,  hope,  and  confidence 
toward  God,  might  reasonably  be  commended  as  religious 
duties  to  be  deduced  even  from  the  limited  premises  con- 
cerning revelation  permitted  by  the  agnostic's  creed ;  for 
the  lines  of  the  working  of  the  Unknown  Power  broaden 
with  the  ages,  and  augmenting  good  flows  in,  like  a  tide, 
from  the  limitless  Beyond. 

This  general  religiousness  of  the  intellect,  as  well  as 
these  ethical  relations  of  mind  and  heart  toward  the  great 
Unknown,  will  prevent  lightness  of  speech  concerning 
man's  highest  spiritual  problems,  and  most  sacred  emotions, 
and  should  lend  to  the  whole  pursuit  of  science  a  Avorship- 
ful  tone  and  purpose.  He  who  has  once  felt  the  presence 
of  the  Unknown  God  can  never  be  found  sitting  in  the 
seat  of  the  scornful.  Even  the  silence  of  science  concern- 
ing God  should  be  reverent,  and  its  speech  should  be 
always  true  to  the  larger  possibility  of  life  in  some  future 
knowledge  of  the  Unseen  and  the  Eternal.  If  we  may 
not  live,  like  the  leader  of  the  faithful,  as  seeing  Him  who 
is  invisible,  we  should  at  least  live  as  members  of  a  race 
to  whom  a  Son  may  be  born  who  shall  see  God. 

The  religious  duties  of  an  agnostic  in  relation  to  the 
public  worship  of  God  present  a  somewhat  different  and 
broader  subject  of  inquiry;  further  considerations  to  be 
derived  from  social  ethics  must  be  allowed  to  enter  into 
their  determination.  The  general  obligation  may  be  urged 
of  uniting,  so  far  as  one  can,  with  others  in  that  attitude 
of  reverence  and  humble  acknowledgment  of  our  human 
finiteness   and  dependence  which  is  expressed  in  public 


DUTIES   TOWARDS    GOD  473 

worship,  and  which  is  admitted  to  be  a  becoming  posture 
of  the  reason  in  view  of  the  Unknown  Power  in  whom 
the  eternal  order  and  hiw  of  the  universe  consist. 

Moreover,  although  the  popular  religious  faiths  contain 
more  doctrine  of  God  than  the  creed  of  agnosticism  can 
receive,  the  withdrawal  of  the  individual  from  all  partici- 
pation in  the  religion  of  the  community  might  prove  to  be 
as  much,  if  not  a  greater,  misrepresentation  of  his  true 
religious  position  as  would  be  involved  in  an  apparent 
accommodation  of  himself  to  the  existing  modes  of  relig- 
ious communion  ;  for  if  he  cannot  affirm  what  the  popular 
creeds*  teach  of  theology,  neither  will  he  deny  the  finite 
dependence,  or  the  spiritual  possibility,  or  the  human  sense 
of  need  and  hope  for  something  better  than  is  known,  in 
which  the  religious  nature  of  man  has  perpetual  spring 
and  power.  Moreover,  for  his  own  breadth  of  vision  the 
solitary  thinker  cannot  afford  to  withhold  himself  entirely 
from  the  general  human  hopes  and  fears,  and  from  the 
current  religious  movements  of  the  social  whole  of  which 
he  is  a  member.  In  the  great  congregation  he  may  find 
spiritual  contacts  and  influences  which  in  the  solitude  of 
his  own  intellect  and  the  felt  emptiness  of  his  own  wisdom 
he  might  miss.  Both  from  the  side  of  social  utility,  and 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  individual  profit  which  is  to 
be  gained  by  keeping  in  ever  fresh  contact  with  the  com- 
mon life  of  humanity,  much  might  be  said  in  behalf  of  the 
obligation  of  participation  in  public  worship  and  religious 
devotion,  even  though  one's  personal  creed  be  mostly  a  con- 
fession of  ignorance  written  in  negations,  and  without 
assured  faith  in  the  love  of  God. 

It  might  be  further  urged  that  the  agnostic,  who  fulfils 
thus  to  the  utmost  such  religious  obligations  as  his  limited 
theology  may  admit ;  who  is  reverent,  who  is  watchful  for 
the  breaking  of  any  truth  from  beyond  the  horizons  of 
the  seen,  and  who  is  not  an  unwilling  participant  in 
our  human  confession  of  religious  need  and  hope,  will 
thereby  be  able  the  more  fairly  to  enter  with  understand- 
ing into  the  great  argument  of  divinity  which  believers 
in    revelation    find   running   through    the   history  of   the 


474  CHRISTIAN    ETHICS 

world ;  he  will  be  better  able  to  measure  the  strength 
of  the  Godward  currents  of  human  tliought  and  life,  and 
will  hold  his  own  personality  within  reach  and  touch  of 
such  influences  of  the  Spirit  of  the  living  God  as  man 
may  be  able  to  receive  through  liis  rational  and  moral 
nature,  and  in  the  stirring  of  the  spiritual  depths  of  his 
being.  Individual  isolation  from  humanity  is  never  wise  ; 
least  of  all  is  it  wisdom  when  the  isolation  might  involve 
loss  of  the  diviner  consciousness  of  humanity.  The  ex- 
plorer must  keep  within  sound  of  the  stream,  if  he 
would  find  his  way  out  with  it  from  its  springs  in  the 
mountain  heights,  on  which  the  dawn  rested,  through  the 
tangle  of  the  forest,  to  the  ocean  beneath  heaven's  full 
evening  liglit. 

11.   DUTIES   IN  RELATION   TO   THE   REVEALED   GOD 

Faith  in  the  revealed  God  is  the  splendid  heritage  of 
Christian  life.  The  Christian's  creed  of  morality  towards 
God  is  richer  than  the  agnostic's  can  be.  It  resembles  the 
trust  of  filial  piety  in  the  home,  and  the  cheerful  humani- 
ties of  the  fireside,  rather  than  the  felt  dependence  and 
awe  of  the  lonely  gazer  through  the  eye  of  the  telescope 
into  the  Divine  m^^stery  of  the  starlit  night. 

For  our  immediate  ethical  purpose  it  will  be  sufficient 
to  observe  these  two  broad  truths  concerning  the  ethical 
scope  and  character  of  revelation :  (1)  The  course  of 
revelation  makes  it  plain  that  moral  truth  is  one  and  the 
same  in  man  and  God :  (2)  In  its  historic  consummation 
revelation  discloses  the  adorable  Christlikeness  of  God. 
From  these  ethical  characteristics  of  God's  self-revelation 
our  Christian  duties  in  relation  to  God  may  be  deter- 
mined ;  in  view  of  the  essential  identity  of  the  morally 
good  in  the  finite  and  the  Infinite,  and  the  revealed  Christ- 
likeness  of  the  Eternal  One,  our  general  religious  con- 
sciousness of  obligation  may  receive  distinctive  Christian 
color  and  form ;  and  this  Christian  distinctiveness  of  our 
obligation  to  God  will  appear  in  such  particulars  as  the 
following. 


DUTIES   TOWARDS   GOD  475 

1.  The  Christian  knowledge  of  God  should  restrain 
men  from  imputing  to  God  any  decrees,  acts,  or  purposes, 
which  in  the  light  of  Christ's  revelation  of  the  righteous 
Father  appear  to  be  contrary  to  our  truest  moral  ideas. 

Although  our  moral  judgments  are  confessedly  imper- 
fect, and  our  ethical  conceptions  admit  of  further  purifi- 
cation and  expansion,  still  our  moral  knowledge,  so  far  as 
it  goes,  is  real  knowledge,  and  we  are  not  to  falsify  its 
truth,  under  any  stress  or  strain  of  logic,  in  our  thought 
of  our  God.  God's  Avays  are  not  as  our  ways  ;  his  universe 
is  still  like  unfinished  architecture  before  our  eyes ;  and 
one  must  be  possessed  of  the  creative  idea  and  the  whole 
conception  of  the  architect  to  be  able  to  judge  correctly 
the  uncompleted  work  with  its  broken  lines  and  apparently 
unrelated  parts.  Criticism  of  unfinished  architecture  is 
proverbially  false.  But  in  our  anxiety  to  behold  as  a  har- 
monious wdiole  God's  as  3^et  unfinished  architecture  of  the 
universe,  we  must  not  call  the  crooked  straight,  nor  regard 
the  apparent  wrong  as  right.  Lines  of  the  incomplete 
creation,  which  now  are  separate,  may  meet  in  some  per- 
fect arch  of  the  divine  design  beyond  our  sight;  yet  we 
should  not  sacrifice  our  present  perceptions  of  moral  truth 
to  the  completeness  of  our  little  systems.  We  must  wait 
the  eternal  issues  while  we  appeal  directly  from  the  known 
moral  truth  in  man  to  the  ethics  of  the  God  of  light,  in 
whom  there  is  no  darkness  at  all.  Love  is  love  always ; 
and  there  is  no  shadow  that  is  cast  by  turning  in  the  right- 
eousness of  the  Father  of  lights.^ 

There  is  no  sovereignty  but  love  in  God  himself.  In 
his  "  love,"  as  Dorner  has  said  with  profound  moral  truth, 
"  God  is  the  power  over  his  omnipotence."^  Love  is  God 
of  God.  Whenever  therefore  in  the  deductions  of  our 
theologies  or  in  our  spiritual  entanglement  amid  the 
thick  moral  perplexities  of  the  w^orld,  we  are  inclined 
to  impute  to  God  decrees,  modes  of  procedure,  or  judg- 
ments, which  we  could  not  imagine  ourselves  as  approv- 
ing without  putting  out  the  moral  light  that  is  within 
us  and  quenching  the  Spirit  of  the  Christ  who  has  shown 

1  James  i.  17.  2  Christl.  Glauhenslehre,  ii.  s.  442. 


476  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

US  the  Father;  always  we  should  regard  such  dilemmas 
of  our  logic,  and  such  confusions  of  good  in  our  systems, 
as  the  work  of  the  Evil  One,  even  though  as  of  old  he  quote 
Scripture  to  lead  us  to  doubt  the  true  God.  The  one  thing 
which  revelation  permits  us  to  assume,  which  it  commands 
us  to  trust  with  our  whole  heart,  is  the  perfect  Christlike- 
ness  of  God.  The  worst  atheism  is  not  failure  of  the  rea- 
son to  receive  the  evidences  of  God's  existence  ;  but  denial 
in  the  heart  of  the  moral  glory  of  the  Godhead.  The 
ethical  duty  of  love  to  God  requires  us  to  find,  or  to 
make,  open  windows  in  our  creeds,  through  which  we  may 
gaze  out  upon  the  infinite  lovableness  of  God. 

2.  The  revelation  of  God,  which  as  Christians  we  have 
received,  requires  of  us  further  such  positive  duties  in  re- 
lation to  God  as  the  following  :  — 

(1)  The  duty  of  reconciliation  with  God. 

This  obligation  proceeds  from  the  revelation  of  God 
who  was  in  Christ  reconciling  the  world  unto  himself.^ 
The  great  reconciliation  was  the  message  of  God,  of  which 
the  apostles  had  become  ambassadors ;  the  Divine  recon- 
ciliation waits  for  the  world  to  turn  towards  its  celestial 
grace,  as  the  glowing  sky  of  evening  waits  for  the  earth  to 
rest  in  its  pure  peace.  Oneness  with  God  in  the  inmost 
will  is  man's  first  obligation  to  his  God.  To  throw  one's 
whole  being  upon  God's  grace  is  the  supreme  act  of  Chris- 
tian faith. 

(2)  The  duty  of  prayer  and  communion  with  God. 

The  Christian  man  may  cultivate  the  habit  of  thought- 
ful, appreciative,  and  reverent  fellowship  of  mind  and 
heart  with  his  God.  Such  communion  (together  with 
whatever  religious  exercises  and  times  of  prayer  may  be 
necessary  or  conducive  to  it)  we  are  to  regard  as  our 
Christian  obligation  toward  God,  because,  through  his 
revelation  in  Clirist,  God  invites  us  to  such  spiritual  com- 
munion ;  and  our  grateful  Christian  consciousness  of  God, 
and  our  making  known  our  requests  unto  Him,  will  be  the 
fitting  response  of  our  being  to  God's  drawing  nigh  to  us 
in  the  Spirit  of  Christ. 

1  2  Cor.  V.  19. 


DUTIES    TOWARDS   GOD  477 

It  lies  beyond  our  present  limits  to  enter  at  length,  into  the  discussion 
of  the  philosophy  of  prayer.  It  is  sufficient  for  our  purpose  to  observe 
that  the  unknown  relations  of  the  living  God  to  the  forces  of  nature,  and 
the  springs  of  human  conduct,  leave  room  for  the  ethics  of  prayer  ;  and, 
further,  the  known  relations  to  men  of  the  revealed  God  justify  the  duties 
of  prayer  which  the  Scriptures  enjoin. 

(3)  To  these  first  duties  toward  God  should  be  added 
the  general  Cliristian  habit  of  referring  all  our  conduct, 
service,  and  moral  effort  to  God  as  to  the  One  supremely 
interested  in  our  human  lives,  and  to  whom  all  true  suc- 
cess of  men's  spirits  is  pleasing.  In  view  of  the  revelation 
of  God's  thought  and  God's  love  for  men,  which  has  been 
made  through  Christ,  we  should  bring  to  Him  as  a  thank- 
offering  all  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit  in  the  new  life  of  faith 
and  hope. 

(4)  An  obligation,  moreover,  of  special  religious  acts 
and  observances,  is  often  due  in  the  fulfilment  of  our  duty 
toward  God. 

The  use  of  the  Christian  means  of  grace  and  the  observ- 
ance of  public  worship  have  already  been  enjoined  as  acts 
necessary  to  the  fulfilment  of  one's  obligation  to  self  as  a 
moral  end,  and  also  as  parts  of  our  religious  social  obliga- 
tion. There  are,  however,  particular  acts  of  thanksgiving, 
prayer,  or  worship,  which  seem  to  be  due  not  merely  for 
the  sake  of  the  moral  benefit  to  be  derived  from  them  in 
the  believer's  own  growth  in  knowledge  and  grace,  and 
which  are  not  obligatory  simply  on  account  of  their  social 
utilities,  but  which  are  fitting  expressions  of  the  personal 
friendship  of  the  disciple  to  the  Master,  and  of  the  loving 
dependence  of  the  spirit  upon  the  Father  in  heaven.  A 
life  passed  without  frequent  and  direct  acknowledgment 
to  God  of  His  mercies  would  lack  toward  Him  a  certain 
element  of  graciousness  which  we  commend  as  a 'virtue  in 
human  friendships.  Only  an  unchristian  conception  of 
God  as  impassive  and  remote,  not  a  Christian  conception 
of  fatherhood  in  the  nature  of  God,  can  lead  us  to  think 
of  our  childlike  motions  of  trust,  and  simple  expressions 
of  gratitude,  and  moments  of  joyous  uplooking  to  Him,  as 
without  value  and  not  pleasing  in  His  sight. 


478  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

The  observance  of  the  Christian  Sabbath,  therefore,  is  to  be  urged  not 
only  for  reasons  of  social  utility,  or  on  account  of  its  reflex  benefits  in  the 
individual  life,  but  also  as  a  special  religious  duty,  and  an  offering  of  love 
to  God. 

All  the  preceding  duties  are  summed  up  and  filled  to 
overflowing  in  the  one  Christian  obligation  of  personal 
love  to  God.  We  can  love  God  only  as  he  is  revealed  to  be 
loveable  ;  He  has  been  revealed  in  his  adorable  loveableness 
in  Jesus  Christ,  and  our  supreme  obligation  to  God  him- 
self passes  into  the  privilege  and  delight  of  loving  Him 
with  all  the  mind  and  heart  and  strength.  As  the  disciples 
of  old  learned  to  follow  their  Master  up  to  the  full  meas- 
ure of  manly  devotion,  so  all  souls  to  whom  God's  Person 
is  made  known  in  Christ  are  to  love  God  in  the  highest. 
Our  Christian  obligation  toward  God  himself  in  its  full 
measure  is  the  love  of  Love,  the  love  of  God  who  is  love, 
—  the  love  of  God  which  thinks  no  evil  of  God,  which 
believeth  all  tilings,  hopeth  all  things,  endureth  all  things 
from  God  —  love  which  rejoiceth  in  the  truth  of  God  — 
love  which  never  faileth  toward  God,  for  now  we  see  in 
a  mirror,  darkly,  but  then  face  to  face :  so  the  apostle's 
royal  words  concerning  charity  may  be  used  with  no  les- 
sened intensity  of  devotion  to  describe  also  that  love 
toward  the  Father  which  Jesus  knew  in  its  fulness,  and 
which  the  saints  have  cherished  in  their  pure  hearts  as 
they  passed  into  the  beatific  vision  of  God. 


CHAPTER   VI 

THE   CHRISTIAN   MORAL   MOTIVE   POWER 

Ethics  in  its  most  important  and  its  profoundest  signif- 
icance is  a  question  of  power.  No  treatise  on  ethics  is 
complete  which  does  not  meet  fully  and  fairly  the  ques- 
tion, What  is  the  moral  dynamics  of  human  life  and  his- 
tory ? 

Our  w^hole  modern  conception  of  nature  is  dynamical ; 
it  is  a  problem  of  forces  with  which  man  has  to  do  alike 
in  his  thought,  his  science,  and  his  conduct.  We  can  no 
longer  take  things  around  us  simply  as  they  seem  to  be, 
looking  upon  our  world  as  a  passing  panorama,  or  series  of 
dissolving  views  ;  we  feel  more  deeply  the  awful  power 
and  mystery  of  things.  Nature  is  not  merely  a  created 
picture  around  us,  amid  which  our  homes  also  have  been 
fairly  painted ;  nature  is  a  ceaseless  play  of  forces  about 
Tis,  and  we,  too,  are  powers  in  the  midst  of  immeasurable 
forces  of  life  and  destiny.  Our  earth,  though  it  be  but  a 
point  in  space,  is  the  meeting-place  of  principalities  and 
powers  from  beneath  and  from  above  ;  every  particle  of 
matter  in  it  quivers  to  the  attraction  of  forces  from  every- 
whither ;  and  we  ourselves  are  not  mere  existences  in  an 
assembly  of  things  ;  we  are  soul-centres  of  energy,  vibrat- 
ing to  the  touch  of  unseen  powers. 

This  dynamical,  as  distinguished  from  a  statical  view 
of  nature  and  personality,  is  also  the  profoundly  ethical 
conception.  In  the  ethical  view  we  are  forces  among 
forces ;  our  life  is  a  question  of  moral  forces ;  earth  and 
heaven,  light  and  darkness,  this  world  and  the  powers  of 
the  world  to  come,  meet  and  contend  for  mastery,  act  and 
are  acted  upon,  for  good  and  evil,  in  the  will  and  charac- 

479 


480  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

ter,  the  life  and  the  destiny  of  each  living  soul,  and  in  the 
history  likewise  of  the  great  social  whole  of  humanity. ^ 

This  dynamical  conception  of  ethics  is  psychologically  true.  For  the 
mind  is  not  a  mechanical  register  of  impressions  or  scripture  of  innate 
ideas,  but  it  is  the  field  rather  for  the  play  of  sensations,  thoughts,  reason- 
ings, imaginations,  and  for  the  triumphs  of  truth,  or  the  victories  of  error  ; 
consequently,  modern  psychology  is  an  inquiry  into  the  forces  and  pro- 
cesses of  consciousness,  and  not  a  mere  reading  of  the  results  of  thought. 
The  intuitional  philosophy,  so  long  as  it  tarries  in  mechanical  conceptions 
of  muid  and  gives  only  a  statical  account  of  consciousness,  is  left  hope- 
lessly behind  by  evolutionary  psychology.  The  remark  which  Lotze  has 
made  with  regard  to  the  study  of  physiology,  may  be  applied  with  equal 
and  even  greater  force  to  the  study  of  psychology,  that  the  processes  of 
life  may  be  themselves  of  more  value  to  us  than  their  products.  For 
elaboration  of  this  view  I  must  refer  to  an  article  on  the  ' '  Dynamical 
Theory  of  the  Intuitions,"  in  the  New  Englander,  May,  1878,  p.  357. 

The  final  ethical  question,  accordingly,  to  which  all  ethical 
inquiries  lead,  is  the  question  of  the  moral  motive  power. 
Ethics  may  be  divided  into  three  main  departments,  of 
which  the  last  is  of  most  far-reaching  importance  :  What 
is  the  nature  of  virtue?  What  is  the  standard  of  moral 
judgment?     What  is  the  motive  power  for  moral  action? 

This  dynamical  moral  view  of  a  human  life  is  the  most 
fascinating  view  of  it.  When  we  form  the  habit  of  con- 
templathig  our  own  lives,  however  humble  they  may  be, 
as  powers  among  the  universal  powers ;  when  we  recog- 
nize also  in  the  lives  of  our  fellow-men  the  operation  of 
forces  from  above  and  from  beneath ;  when  we  regard  the 
whole  development  of  human  history  as  a  conflict  of  world- 
powers,  all  of  them  held  within  the  grasp  of  some  mightier 
purpose,  and  working  together  for  far-off  prophetic  issues ; 
then  the  whole  theatre  of  human  life,  even  the  less  con- 
spicuous portions  of  it,  becomes  invested  with  a  strange 
fascination,  is  possessed  often  with  an  awful  significance, 
and  at  times  we  may  watch,  as  almost  breathless  spec- 
tators, this  vast  and  momentous  conflict  of  the  ages. 

The  power  of  moral  ideals  is  to  be  estimated  in  the 
motives  for  their  realization  which  they  inspire  among  those 

1  St.  Paul's  epistles  show  how  profoundly  he  had  entered  into  this  dynami- 
cal conception  of  human  life  as  a  conflict  between  the  powers  of  this  world 
and  the  powers  of  the  world  to  come. 


THE   CHRISTIAN  MORAL   MOTIVE   POWER  481 

who  receive  them.  It  is  still  further  to  be  judged  by  the 
capacity  of  the  moral  ideal  for  extension  in  ever  broaden- 
ing circles  of  influence  among  men.  The  test  of  the  ade- 
quacy of  the  moral  motive  power  for  liuman  life  is  thus  seen 
to  be  twofold ;  —  its  transforming  intensity  among  those 
who  receive  it,  and  its  missionary  energy  in  the  world. 

In  all  the  conceptions  of  virtue  which  have  been  cher- 
ished from  antiquity  some  "virtue-making  power"  may  be 
recognized.  But  the  question  of  supreme  practical  con- 
cern is  not  whether  a  given  moral  conception  possesses 
some  motive  power,  but  whether  we  may  discover  in  any 
moral  ideal  an  adequate  "virtue-making  power"  for  the 
human  race. 


The  Platonic  ethics  recognized  the  moral  motive  which  proceeds  from 
the  contemplation  of  the  morally  beautiful,  but  it  did  not  meet  the  ques- 
tion, How  shall  a  man  born  blind  to  the  morally  beautiful  receive  his 
sight  ?  At  best  those  incapable  of  philosophical  contemplation  must  be 
morally  controlled  by  the  State,  Aristotle,  perceiving  the  inadequacy  of 
knowledge  to  make  men  virtuous,  seeks  in  the  concluding  book  of  the 
Nicomachean  ethics  to  give  some  answer  to  the  question,  How  shall  men 
become  virtuous  ?  Happiness  he  regards  as  an  energy,  and  virtue  is  to 
be  obtained  by  the  practice  of  virtue.  Aristotle  rightly  lays  stress  upon 
the  power  of  habit ;  but  the  only  remedy  he  can  suggest  for  those  who 
do  not  practice  virtue  is  force  ;  and  the  State  is  to  exercise  the  force  nec- 
essary to  educate  or  to  compel  the  people  to  virtue.  The  presupposition 
of  Aristotle's  education  in  the  practice  of  virtue  is  that  "there  must, 
therefore,  previously  exist  a  character  in  some  way  connected  with  virtue, 
loving  what  is  honorable,  and  hatmg  what  is  disgraceful"  {Xic.  Eth. 
X.  9). 

We  receive  useful  suggestions  from  the  classic  ethics  concerning  the 
moral  methods  in  which  the  wise  may  be  made  wiser  and  the  good  better, 
but  they  shed  little  light  upon  the  darker,  abysmal  moral  question  of  our 
history.  How  shall  a  man  born  in  sin  be  made  whole? 

Moral  motive  and  help  are  to  be  drawn  from  utilitarian  ethics.  The 
chief  service,  however,  of  modern  utilitarianism  consists  in  its  determina- 
tion of  ethical  standards  of  conduct  rather  than  in  any  contribution  it 
makes  to  the  dynamics  of  duty.  A  large  and  well-reasoned  conception  of 
human  happiness,  in  which  the  personal  interest  is  seen  to  blend,  doubt- 
less has  attraction  for  minds  capable  of  apprehending  it.  There  is  also  a 
natural  spring  of  moral  motive  in  a  magnified  self-interest.  Every  man 
capable  of  moral  feeling  lives  to  some  extent  for  the  larger  self,  in  which, 
at  least,  his  immediate  friends  and  dependents  become  identified  with 
him.  And  this  enlargement  of  self  through  processes  of  utilitarian 
reasoning  may  be  expanded  until  it  transcends  the  bounds  of  class,  or 
country,  and  touches  the  ends  of  the  world.     But  the  weakness  of  this 


482  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

method  of  expanding  self-interest  into  a  principle  of  general  benevolence 
is  uncovered  by  this  keen  criticism  of  Principal  Shairp:  "When  the 
endeavor  is  made  to  combine  with  it  benevolence,  and  to  take  in  the 
whole  human  race,  the  motive  is  no  doubt  elevated,  but  at  the  expense  of 
its  power"  (Studies  in  Poetry  and  Philosophy,  p.  310.  See,  also,  Prin- 
cipal Shairp  and  his  Friends,  pp.  247  sq.)  This  is  obvious  because  in 
such  ethics  benevolence  is  not  increased,  like  a  stream,  from  its  own  ex- 
haustless  source,  but  rather  the  love  of  one's  own  happiness  is  stretched 
by  force  of  reasoning  until  it  is  made  to  include  a  great  number  of  ob- 
jects ;  and  the  wider  its  artificial  extension,  the  thinner  it  becomes, 
and  the  greater  is  its  liability  to  break.  Moreover,  this  moral  motive  is 
with  difficulty  refined  from  the  prudential  sordidness  of  its  origin  in  self- 
interest.  And  even  when  a  moral  flame  is  kindled  from  such  oil,  it  burns 
with  a  too  dim  and  odorous  light.  A  calculating  ethics  lacks  spontaneity 
and  sacrificial  enthusiasm.  Considerations  of  utility  are  by  no  means  to 
be  rejected  as  without  value  in  motive  ;  but  they  are  poor  materials  for 
the  flame  of  sacrificial  love.  The  utilitarian  calculus  has  its  worth  in 
the  determination  of  moral  judgments  ;  but  a  table  of  moral  logarithms 
would  be  a  poor  source  of  ethical  inspiration.  Much  the  same  criticism 
may  be  passed  upon  the  inadequacy  as  a  moral  motive  of  the  conception 
of  humanity,  the  so-called  religion  of  humanity.  Humanity  in  the 
abstract  is  not  easy  to  be  loved,  at  least  by  the  generality  of  men.  There 
is  little  influence  over  conduct  to  be  drawn  from  the  contemplation  of  a 
glowing  cloud.  It  is  ethically  difficult  to  adore  a  generalization,  and  to 
obey  a  formula  with  all  the  heart. 

An  extreme,  nominally  scientific  answer  to  the  question  of  moral 
dynamics  is  represented  in  Mr.  J.  Cotter  Morison's  Service  of  Man.  The 
idea  of  moral  responsibility  is  to  be  got  rid  of  entirely.  "  The  sooner 
it  is  perceived  that  bad  men  will  be  bad,  do  what  we  will,  though,  of 
course,  they  may  be  made  less  bad,  the  sooner  shall  we  come  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  welfare  of  society  demands  the  suppression  or  elimina- 
tion of  bad  men,  and  the  careful  cultivation  of  the  good  only"  (p.  215) 
"Nothing  is  gained  by  disguising  the  fact  that  there  is  no  remedy  for 
a  bad  heart,  and  no  substitute  for  a  good  one"  (p.  216).  We  do  not 
deny  the  truth  in  this  extreme  reasoning  that  morality  may  to  some 
extent  be  bred  into  the  blood  of  the  race  ;  on  the  contrary.  Christian 
training,  we  believe,  tends  to  naturalize  the  gracious  powers  of  redemp- 
tion, to  make  men  more  naturally  Christian.  But  a  method  of  making 
virtue  which  "demands  pupils  who  can  learn"  {Ibid.  p.  219),  and  which 
condemns  the  bad  to  extermination,  confesses  its  own  impotence  as  a 
moral  motive  power  for  humanity. 

Do  we  find  in  Christian  ethics  a  sufficient  motive  power 
for  life?  Such  motive  must  be  simple,  comprehensive, 
and  efficacious.  It  must  answer  for  all  men  and  for  all 
things  of  all  men.  It  must  appeal  directly  to  the  human 
heart,  and  to  all  the  affections  and  capacities  of  human 
hearts.     It  must  be  broad  as  life  and  strong  as  the  will  of 


THE   CHRISTIAN   MORAL    MOTIVE   POWER  483 

God.  It  must  show  its  vital  force  by  the  fruits  of  right- 
eousness in  every  climate  and  under  all  conditions.  It 
must  prove  to  be  a  new  creative  and  redemptive  power  in 
a  sinful  humanity.  Otherwise  it  is  not  a  sufficient  ^'  virtue- 
making  power  "  for  us  on  this  earth. 

We  seek  the  answer  to  the  question,  where  shall  such 
power  of  godliness  be  found,  first  from  the  history  of  the 
Christian  religion.  Has  it  furnished  a  motive  which  has 
met  the  needs  of  men,  which  has  proved  equal  to  the  stress 
and  strain  of  life  ? 

I.    THE   CHRISTIAN  MOTIVE   POWER  IX  HISTORY 

1.    The  moral  motives  in  the  Old  Testament. 

The  history  of  Israel,  taken  as  a  whole,  manifests  the 
presence  and  working  of  a  moral  motive  power  which  made 
for  righteousness,  and  which  led  the  hope  of  the  people  on 
toward  a  Messianic  ideal.  Israel  gained  a  power  of  moral 
leadership  such  as  no  other  ancient  people  reached.  More- 
over, the  moral  power  of  the  law  and  the  prophets  in  Israel 
worked  steadily  against  the  natural  gravitation  of  the 
chosen  people  downwards  tow^ard  the  idolatrous  customs  of 
surrounding  communities ;  it  lifted  and  held  the  heart  of 
Israel,  in  spite  of  its  natural  grossness  and  hardness,  up  to 
the  light  of  a  high  and  holy  ideal  of  righteousness  and 
peace. 

The  moral  motive,  which  shaped  the  institutions  and  led 
on  the  fortunes  of  Israel,  was  derived  mainly  from  the 
religion  of  the  chosen  people.  The  mainspring  of  it  was 
obedience  to  the  will  of  Jehovah.  The  fear  of  the  Lord 
became  the  dominant  motive  of  life  in  Israel.  The  force 
of  this  supreme  religious  motive  made  itself  felt  in  two 
main  directions,  —  in  regard  for  the  outward  ordinances  of 
Jehovah,  in  the  observance  of  the  fasts  and  sacrifices  of  the 
law;  and  also  in  the  maintenance  of  those  "just  relations," 
and  the  performance  of  those  deeds  of  righteousness  and 
mercy,  Avhich  were  worthy  of  the  character  of  Jehovah 
whose  will  was  the  nation's  law.  The  religious  motive 
power  in  Israel  gained  consequently  a  distinctive  and  effec- 


484  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

tive   influence   upon    conduct,  besides  its  ritualistic  ten- 
dency. 

The  moral  motives  which  appear  in  the  literature  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment may  be  critically  analyzed  in  the  following  manner :  (1)  Those 
natural  impulses  which  are  predominant  in  the  earlier  stages  of  com- 
munal life  among  all  tribes  on  the  way  to  civilization,  are  to  be  found  in 
the  biblical  narratives  of  ancient  Israel.  Among  these  may  be  mentioned 
regard  for  the  family  (Gen.  xxvii.  41,  xliv.  30  sq.  xxxiv.  25  sq.  etc.)  ;  also 
the  tribal  sense,  and  later  the  love  of  the  people  and  the  land,  the  national 
sense  (Ex.  xxxii.  32 ;  Jud.  xix.  12)  ;  see  also  those  passages  which  show 
David's  respect  for  the  King  who  is  the  Lord's  anointed.  Besides  these 
should  be  noticed  the  power  of  ancient  customs,  which  sometimes  over- 
ruled more  moral  considerations  (Gen.  xix.  6  sq.  xxix.  26). 

(2)  The  distinctively  religious  motive  of  obedience  to  the  command- 
ments of  the  Lord.  The  will  of  Jehovah  is  to  be  obeyed,  not  because  it  is 
seen  to  be  morally  good,  but  because  it  is  the  will  of  the  God  of  Israel, 
who  has  power  to  reward  or  punish,  and  with  whom  as  their  God  the 
people  stand  in  covenant  relation  (Gen.  xii.).  Acts  are  done  to  please 
God  rather  than  from  moral  considerations  (Ex.  xxxii.  27  sq.  ;  Num. 
xxi.  2  ;  etc.). 

(3)  The  will  of  God  to  be  done  becomes  more  thoroughly  and  con- 
sciously identified  with  the  morally  good.  The  religious  motive,  which  in 
Israel  had  absorbed  other  motives,  was  itself  moralized  ;  Jehovah  is  the 
God  of  righteousness,  and  the  object  of  the  whole  covenant,  law,  and 
promise  of  the  Lord  is  to  establish  a  kingdom  of  righteousness.  While 
the  prophets  and  the  Deuteronomic  law  lay  great  emphasis  upon  the  fidelity 
of  the  people  to  God,  and  thus,  on  the  one  hand,  seem  to  exalt  the  purely 
religious  motive  of  obedience  to  the  will  of  Jehovah,  on  the  other  hand, 
they  perceive  that  what  God  wills  is  justice  and  mercy,  and  that  the 
purpose  of  Jehovah  is  to  establish  "just  relations  "  among  men.  Hence, 
in  the  name  of  Jehovah  the  prophets  rebuke  the  immoralities  and  social 
abuses  of  their  times  ;  the  fruit  which  the  Lord  desires  in  his  vineyard  is 
judgment  and  righteousness  (Is.  v.  7)  ;  deceit  and  violence  and  false 
balances  in  trade  are  an  abomination  (Micah  vi.  10-12)  ;  it  is  irreligion 
for  the  rich  to  have  the  spoil  of  the  poor  in  their  houses,  and  to  crush  the 
people  (Is.  iii.  14,  15). 

(4)  The  motive  of  obedience  to  the  will  of  God  became  still  more 
deeply  moralized  as  the  elements  of  gratitude  and  love  entered  into  it. 
The  law  is  to  be  obeyed  not  merely  from  fear  or  in  hope,  but  with  a 
grateful  sense  of  God's  goodness  and  from  love  to  his  law  (Deut.  vi.  4-6  ; 
x.  12,  13),  In  the  later  Israel  the  law  of  God  became  itself  an  object  of 
love  (Ps.  xix.  9,  10  ;  cxix.  97). 

(5)  To  these  factors  in  the  motive  power  of  Israel  should  be  added 
the  prudence  and  reverence  which  characterize  the  Wisdom  literature. 
The  beginning  of  wisdom  is  the  fear  of  the  Lord  (Prov.  i.  1-7)  ;  this  wis- 
dom is  identical  with  a  life  of  truth,  justice,  and  goodness. 

A  critical  review  of  the  moral  motives,  which  are  to  be  found  in  the 
religion  of  Israel,  has  been  made  by  Sclmltz  in  the  Studlen  und  Kritiken^ 


THE   CHRISTIAN   MORAL    MOTIVE    PO^VER  485 

1890,  erstes  Heft.  Of  the  prophetic  period  he  remarks  :  "  The  motive  of 
the  fear  of  God  receives  through  the  new  element  of  grateful  love  to  him 
the  character  of  moral  freedom.  The  regard  for  reward  and  punishment 
remains  living,  indeed,  as  an  impelling  motive  behind  the  whole  tendency 
of  the  people  :  but  it  does  not  influence  consciously  the  individual  moral 
conduct.  The  end  of  God  appears  no  more  as  arbitrary.  It  makes  for 
the  restoration  of  the  just  and  benevolent  commonwealth  in  Israel.  All 
individual  action  is  ordered  in  accordance  with  the  principles  of  fidelity 
towards  this  end,  of  righteousness,  trustworthiness,  and  goodness.  The 
external  and  the  ceremonial  action  retreat,  or  are  ordered  in  fidelity  to 
this  end  of  God  in  Israel "  (Ibid.  s.  57). 

Canon  Fremantle  maintains  less  critically  that  "  the  law  of  moral 
and  political  relations  was  also  the  centre  of  the  theology  of  the  Old  Tes- 
tament" ;  that  "the  law  which  established  just  relations  between  men 
was  the  central  and  inspiring  fact  of  the  Hebrew  literature  "  (The  World 
as  the  Subject  of  Redemption.,  pp.  67,  83). 

This  religious-moral  motive  of  Israel  was  a  social  force 
which  moulded  the  institutions,  shaped  the  national  char- 
acter, and  determined  the  Messianic  mission  of  the  chosen 
people.  The  social  influence  and  national  results  of  this 
motive  power  are  to  be  studied  in  the  Mosaic  legislation, 
in  the  development  of  the  prophetic  teaching  of  practical 
righteousness,  in  the  insistence  of  the  Psalms  on  justice  and 
compassion,  and  in  the  preparation  of  Judaism  for  Christian- 
ity. Its  ethical  power  and  triumph  are  conspicuously  wit- 
nessed in  the  visions  and  the  tasks  of  prophets  like  Hosea 
and  Isaiah,  and  in  the  work  of  that  noble  succession  of  moral 
leaders  and  religious  statesmen  whose  words  of  judgment 
and  mercy,  whose  denunciations  of  social  and  political 
wrongs,  wdiose  fair  pictures  of  ideal  life  in  some  future 
age  of  Zion's  perfection  of  beauty,  constitute  the  inestima- 
ble ethical  w^ealth  and  glory  of  the  Old  Testament. 

It  has  been  justly  remarked  by  Canon  JNlozley  ^  that 
prophecy  was  '^  an  architect  and  builder "  in  Israel.  It 
was  characteristic  of  the  faith  of  Israel  that,  unlike  the 
moral  motive  of  all  surrounding  peoples,  it  possessed 
architectural  genius  and  vision,  and  has  proved  itself  to  be  a 
great  power  of  ethical  construction,  not  only  in  the  laws  and 
institutions  of  the  chosen  people,  but  also  in  the  political 
as  well  as  religious  history  of  the  world.     It  laid  broad 

1  Elding  Ideas  in  Early  Ages,  p.  18. 


486  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

foundations  of  law  and  righteousness  upon  which  the 
modern  nations  should  establish  their  institutions ;  it  has 
built  through  the  wilderness  and  over  mountains  a  high- 
way for  the  Lord.  Up  to  the  limits  of  its  revelation  and 
the  possibilities  of  its  historic  environment,  faith  worked 
in  Israel  constructively  and  successfully,  as  no  moral  motive 
power  has  ever  worked  in  the  history  of  any  other  nation. 
The  exultant  patriotism  of  the  Hebrew  historian  was  justi- 
fied by  the  ethical  fruits  of  the  religious  motive  of  Israel :  — 
"  For  what  great  nation  is  there,  that  hath  a  god  so  nigh 
unto  them,  as  the  Lord  our  God  is  whensoever  we  call 
upon  him  ?  And  what  great  nation  is  there,  that  hath 
statutes  and  judgments  so  righteous  as  all  this  law,  which 
I  set  before  you  this  day  ?  "  ^ 

2.  The  moral  motive  power  in  the  New  Testament 
was  freed  from  temporary  and  Judaic  limitations,  and  there 
is  presented  in  the  gospel  a  direct  personal  appeal  to  the 
common  heart  of  humanity  from  the  infinite  heart  of  the 
revealed  God. 

Jesus'  method  of  making  men  good  was  to  bring  the 
love  of  God  home  to  their  hearts.  Jesus  would  draw  men 
one  by  one  to  himself,  and  by  his  own  interest  in  them 
make  them  feel  that  God,  their  Father  and  his,  was  per- 
sonally interested  in  them.  The  Christ  not  only  gave  to 
his  disciples  the  new  commandment  of  love,  he  gave  him- 
self—  and  the  Father  through  himself  —  to  be  loved  by 
them.  Hence  the  moral  motive  to  which  Jesus  trusted  in 
men,  was  the  power  of  a  new  affection  in  their  hearts. 
His  presence  made  virtue  possible  because  it  inspired  love. 
This  is  the  "virtue-making  power"  of  the  gospel — love 
from  God  calling  forth  love  to  God  in  human  hearts.  It 
is  "  the  expulsive  power  of  a  new  affection  "  (to  quote  the 
famous  title  of  one  of  Dr.  Chalmers'  sermons),  and  it  is 
also  the  creative  power  of  a  new  enthusiasm. 

The  effect  of  the  new  motive  which  Christ's  coming 
brought  to  men,  as  it  was  to  be  observed  in  the  characters 
and  subsequent  lives  of  the  first  disciples,  was  wonderful, 
as  is  the  transfiguration  of  the  earth  in  the  holy  dawn  over 

1  Deut.  iv.  7,  8. 


THE   CHRISTIAN   MOKAI.  MOTIVE   POWER  487 

the  mountain  tops  of  a  new,  bright  day.  All  the  disciples 
under  the  influence  of  Jesus  become  changed,  living  as  new 
men  in  a  new  world.  This  observed  change,  so  thorough, 
so  profound,  so  comprehensive,  and  so  permanent,  would 
be  an  unaccountable  miracle  in  the  moral  realm,  did  it  not 
become  natural  again  to  our  contemplation  of  it  as  we 
view^  it  in  its  immediate  relation  to  the  Power  whereby  it 
was  wrought,  —  we  behold  it  as  the  direct  effect  among 
men  of  the  shining  of  the  one  Life  which  was  full  of  grace 
and  truth. 

3.  This  Christian  motive  power  is  to  be  studied  still 
further  in  the  continuous  life  of  the  Church  and  in  the 
fruits  of  Christianity.  It  is  to-day  the  known  and  positive 
power  of  the  Spirit  working  in  human  hearts,  moulding 
social  life,  reforming  multitudes,  and  building  noble  insti- 
tutions in  all  lands. 

The  conclusion  that  it  is  a  sufficient  moral  power,  that 
it  works,  that  it  meets  life,  that  it  carries  with  it  inexpres- 
sible energies  of  good,  is  the  broad  and  comprehensive 
induction  which  the  experiences  of  countless  individuals, 
and  the  reasonable  assurance  of  eighteen  centuries  of  Chris- 
tianity in  the  w^orld,  warrant  us  in  making.  The  Christian 
motive  power  is  proved  by  experience  to  be  sufficient  to 
stir  man  to  better  life,  to  awaken  all  his  faculties,  and  to 
move  his  powers  harmoniously  for  their  most  productive 
activity.  The  Christian  motives  meet  life  in  all  its  needs ; 
Christianity  fit-s  life  in  its  exaltation  and  its  depression,  in 
its  heights  and  depths,  and  over  all  its  common  plains ; 
and  in  its  fitness  to  life,  as  it  vitalizing  atmosphere,  there 
is  ever  present  spiritual  evidence  of  its  divineness. 


J.  Cotter  Morison  forms  an  estimate  from  a  very  meagre  historical 
induction  of  "  what  Christianity  has  done,"  and  advances  in  his  summary 
of  its  effects  the  following  proposition,  which  may  be  taken  as  a  fair 
example  of  modern  efforts  to  reduce  to  the  lowest  terms  the  moral  influ- 
ence of  Christianity  in  history:  "That  Christianity  has  a  very  limited 
influence  on  the  world  at  large  ;  but  a  most  powerful  effect  on  certain 
high-toned  natures,  who,  by  becoming  true  saints,  produce  an  immense 
impression  on  public  opinion,  and  give  that  religion  much  of  the  honor 
which  it  enjoys  "  {Service  of  3Ian,  p.  177).  This  is  an  inversion  of  the 
objection  against  Christianity  which  was  made  by  Celsus,   one  of  the 


488  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS 

first  pagan  writers  against  the  new  doctrine,  that  '  workers  in  wool  and 
in  leather,  and  fullers,  and  persons  the  most  nninstructed  and  rustic, 
were  the  most  zealous  ambassadors  of  Christianity,  and  brought  it  first 
to  women  and  children'  (Origen,  c.  Cel.  iii.  55).  "Let  us  hear,"  said 
Celsus,  "  what  kind  of  persons  these  Christians  invite.  Every  one,  they 
say,  who  is  a  sinner,  who  is  devoid  of  understanding,  who  is  a  child,  .  .  . 
him  will  the  kingdom  of  God  receive"  {Ibid.  iii.  59).  The  two  objec- 
tions, the  ancient  and  the  modern,  cancel  each  other.  It  is  true  against 
Celsus  that  Christianity  has  produced  "  a  most  powerful  effect  on  certain 
high-toned  natures"  ;  and  it  is  true  against  the  modern  objector  that 
many  of  the  humble  and  the  weak  are  called,  —  every  Christian  parish 
has  its  unknown  saints.  "There  has  scarcely  been  a  town  in  any  Chris- 
tian country  since  the  time  of  Christ  where  a  century  has  passed  without 
exhibiting  a  character  of  such  elevation  that  his  mere  presence  has  shamed 
the  bad  and  made  the  good  better,  and  has  been  felt  at  times  like  the 
presence  of  God  himself.  And  if  this  be  so,  has  Christ  failed  ?  or  can 
Christianity  die  ?  "  {Ecce  Homo,  p.  185). 

There  are  two  marked  characteristics  of  the  motive  of 
Christian  ethics  which  lie  plainly  to  be  seen  on  the  surface 
of  Christian  experience,  and  which  distinguish  the  whole 
history  of  Christianity.  One  is  the  consciousness  of  power 
with  which  the  Christian  life  is  filled. 

The  great  objection  which  Saul  of  Tarsus,  in  his  Hebrew 
love  of  a  religion  of  power,  found  with  the  new  religion  of 
the  despised  Nazarene,  seems  to  have  been  its  appearance 
of  weakness  and  shame.  He  never  could  become  a  fol- 
lower of  a  feeble  faith,  —  a  faith  which  had  been  put  to 
open  shame  on  a  cross.  He  Avould  have  a  world-conquer- 
ing religion.  And  he  found,  to  his  immense  surprise,  in 
his  vision  of  the  risen  and  glorified  Lord,  that  the  religion 
of  Jesus  is  the  religion  of  power.  Afterwards  he  said 
with  repeated  insistence,  and  as  though  speaking  from  the 
depths  of  his  personal  experience,  that  he  was  not  ashamed 
of  the  gospel ;  and  it  became  to  the  great  apostle  as  he 
preached  it,  the  religion  of  power,  destined  to  a  universal 
empire.^  Thus  true  Christianity  has  always  grown  con- 
scious of  itself  as  the  religion  of  moral  power.  A  soul 
baptized  into  its  spirit,  gains  a  glowing  sense  of  spiritual 
vitality.  "  We  have  not  received  the  spirit  of  fear,  but  of 
power," — such  is  the  Christian  man's  experience  of  the 
faith  which  has  become  the  energy  of  goodness  in  his  soul. 

1  See  Matheson,  Spiritual  Development  of  St.  Paul,  pp.  32  seq. 


THE  CHRISTIAN   MORAL  MOTIVE  POWER  489 

It  is  faith  in  the  strong  Son  of  God.  And  the  Christian 
Church,  almost  in  proportion  as  it  has  the  Spirit  of  Christ, 
is  stirred  with  a  passion  for  spiritual  achievement,  and 
goes  forth  with  a  missionary  faith  to  conquer  the  world  for 
Christ.  Because  possessed  of  the  Spirit  of  power,  Chris- 
tianity has  always  been  in  history  the  Church  militant,  and 
also  the  Church  expectant.  It  sings  by  faith  in  every  age 
the  song  of  the  Church  triumphant.  The  Christian  mo- 
tive power  meets  thus  the  test  of  missionary  energy  for 
humanity. 

The  other  characteristic  of  the  Christian  consciousness 
of  a  motive  sufficient  for  life  is  this :  the  Holy  Spirit,  from 
whence  comes  all  power,  is  the  Spirit  of  wisdom  and  love 
for  common  work  and  for  everyday  life.  The  Christian 
motive  is  not  power  only  of  aspiration  for  the  rarer  ex- 
periences of  souls  in  the  vision  of  God;  the  Christian 
motive  is  daily  power  of  the  Spirit  for  life's  common  uses. 
The  Christian  man  is  not  irreverent,  but  true  to  his  deep- 
est experience  of  the  Christian  life,  when  he  speaks  of  the 
daily  help  in  common  duties  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  He 
enters  into  the  communion  of  the  Spirit  in  all  places,  amid 
all  tasks,  and  no  duty  is  too  humble  to  be  borne  in  the 
Spirit  of  his  Master  and  Lord. 

The  Christian  motive  power  is  thus  found  to  be  suffi- 
cient under  the  other  test  of  its  transforming  intensity  for 
individual  character  and  life. 

II.  a:n^alysis  of  the  christian  motive  power 

Our  inquiry  concerning  the  adequacy  of  the  Christian 
motive  for  life  has  thus  far  been  inductive  from  its  observed 
operations  among  those  who  come  under  the  power  of  it ; 
we  may  proceed  to  understand  the  reasons  of  its  proved 
practical  efficacy  by  a  more  critical  analysis  of  the  ele- 
ments of  its  power. 

1.  We  discover  in  it  the  force  of  certain  morally  power- 
ful truths. 

All  truths  exist  in  potential  relations  to  conduct,  but 
they  differ  in  the  materials  of  motive  which  they  present. 


490  CHEISTIAN   ETHICS 

Some  truths  seem  to  be  almost  spontaneously  convertible 
into  the  flame  and  energy  of  a  soul.  The  truths  of  the  gos- 
pel are  pre-eminently  truths  for  action,  truths  full  of 
motive  and  light  for  life.  They  are  peculiarly  truths  to 
be  done.  THe  Lord  could  speak  of  his  disciples  as  doers 
of  his  word;  for  his  words  lead  directly  to  deeds.  The 
gospel  is  not  revelation  of  abstract  divinity  —  a  science 
of  celestial  astronomy,  but  a  near  and  present  and  urgent 
revelation  of  truths,  divine  and  human,  which  ought  at 
once  to  get  themselves  done  in  the  lives  of  men.  God 
throughout  the  Bible  has  his  eye  on  character. 

We  find,  then,  in  the  simplicity  and  abundance  of  the 
materials  of  motive  in  the  teaching  of  Christ  and  his  disci- 
ples, one  secret  of  the  moral  power  which  the  Christian 
faith  has  in  the  world  of  conduct.  Take,  for  example,  its 
doctrine  of  divine  forgiveness,  its  assurance  of  the  atone- 
ment which  has  been  made  for  sin.  That  truth  may  be 
treated  as  a  dogma  of  our  theology,  and  in  its  formal  defini- 
tion and  discussion  be  held  indeed  quite  apart  from  life. 
But  as  we  find  the  word  of  forgiveness  in  the  gospels  it 
was  a  word  of  healing  for  soul  and  body.^  It  is  the  prac- 
tical, human,  ethical  side  of  the  truth  of  God's  willingness 
to  forgive  sins  that  is  chiefly  presented  in  the  words  and 
the  deeds  of  Jesus.  And  what  truth  lies  nearer  the  springs 
of  new  life,  wdiat  word  from  God  can  be  so  quickly  con- 
verted under  the  influence  of  the  Spirit  into  light  and  joy, 
as  this  truth  of  the  divine  forgiveness  of  sins  which  is  the 
heart  of  Jesus'  gospel  to  the  world  ?  Men  have  been  lifted 
up  and  sent  on  to  new  lives  of  hopeful  obedience  by  this 
gospel  of  the  divine  forgiveness  of  sins,  as  they  have  not 
been  by  all  the  moral  philosophies  which  have  been  offered 
for  virtue's  recovery  since  the  world  began. 

We  might  draw  further  illustrations  of  the  richness  of 
Christian  theology  in  truths  for  immediate  ethical  assimi- 
lation and  use  from  such  doctrines  as  the  Fatherhood  of 
God,  the  divine  thoughtfulness  for  the  individual,  Christ's 
hope  for  publicans  and  sinners,  and  other  truths  of  grace, 

See  the  account  in  the  gospel  of  the  cure  of  the  man  sick  of  the  palsy  ; 


1 
Matt.  ix.  1-8. 


THE   CHRISTIAN   MORAL    MOTIVE   POWER  491 

which  abound  in  the  New  Testament,  and  which  have 
entered  as  quickening  and  light-giving  forces  into  the  ex- 
perience of  Christian  men.  These  truths  are  bread  of  life. 
There  is  no  storehouse  of  materials  for  ethical  use  so  rich, 
so  exhaustless,  so  immediately  convertible  into  character, 
as  the  New  Testament.  The  epistles  seem  to  grow  and  to 
blossom  of  themselves  into  the  Christian  graces;  their  great 
doctrinal  trunk-truths  bear  richly  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit. 
Their  practical  precepts  are  the  direct  ethical  products  of 
their  truths  of  divine  grace. 

2.  Not  only  by  its  wealth  of  truths  which  are  converti- 
ble into  ethical  uses  does  Christianity  prove  itself  to  be 
moral  power  in  the  world,  but  also  it  moves  men  even  more 
profoundly  through  the  influence  of  Christ's  life  and  exam- 
ple. The  Christian  man  does  not  simply,  like  Plato's 
charioteer,  lift  his  eyes  for  a  moment's  glance  at  the  super- 
sensible ideals  above  heaven's  clear  vault ;  the  Christian 
beholds  the  heavenly  ideals  incarnate  and  personally 
present  in  the  life  of  his  Master  and  Lord. 

With  the  first  disciples  who  followed  the  Son  of  man,  their 
motive  of  discipleship  evidently  consisted  in  the  power 
of  the  personal  attraction  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  who  called 
them,  and  they  left  all  and  followed  him.^  Not  only  by 
his  mighty  works  did  Jesus  awaken  their  Messianic  hopes, 
but  still  more  by  his  personal  character  and  power  the 
Christ  commanded  their  utmost  devotion,  and  led  them  up 
to  Jerusalem  where  he  was  to  be  crucified.  Jesus  gained 
supreme  personal  mastery  over  his  disciples.  They  w^alked 
with  him,  and  came  under  the  supernal  spell  of  his  charac- 
ter, and  called  him  Master  and  Lord.  The  law  of  disci- 
pleship was  the  felt  personal  influence  of  Jesus  himself. 
There  is  no  other  adequate  representation  or  historic 
explanation  of  primitive  Christianity  than  this :  Christ 
himself  in  the  midst  of  his  disciples. 

This  personal  presence  and  mastery  of  Christ  is  no  lon- 
ger limited,  as  of  old,  to  the  few  disciples  who  go  with 
him  in  the  way,  and  see  him  in  the  wondrous  beauty  and 
the  great  peace  of  his  pure  life.     There  have  been  two 

i  Mark  i.  16-20 ;  x.  28. 


492  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

eras  in  the  coming  of  the  moral  motive  power  of  Christian- 
ity; the  first  was  the  manifestation  of  the  historic  Christ 
to  his  disciples;  the  second,  and  the  greater  era,  is  the 
presence  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ  in  the  world.  The  mis- 
sionary apostle,  who  had  conversed  with  Peter  and  John 
___  disciples  who  had  been  with  Jesus  in  his  earthly  life,  — 
and  who  himself  had  seen  a  vision  of  the  Lord,  turns  not 
regretfully  but  with  expectant  and  powerful  faith  to  the 
new  and  more  glorious  dispensation  of  the  Spirit,  declar- 
ing: "Wherefore  we  henceforth  know  no  man  after  the 
flesh :  even  though  we  have  known  Christ  after  the  flesh, 
yet  now  we  know  him  so  no  more."^  And  corresponding 
to  the  light  and  the  glory  of  the  new  era  of  the  spiritual 
presence  and  influence  of  the  risen  and  ascended  Lord, 
the  apostle  sees  will  be  the  transforming  power  of  the 
Christian  motive  wherever  it  is  received :  "  Wherefore  if 
any  man  is  in  Christ,  he  is  a  new  creature:  the  old  things 
are  passed  away;  behold,  they  are  become  new."^ 

3.  In  the  Christian  moral  motive  power  we  discover, 
therefore,  as  its  deepest  and  exhaustless  source  of  power 
the  working  of  the  Spirit  of  Christ. 

This  is  not  a  miraculous  grace  instantaneously  chang- 
ing sinful  character  into  all  perfection.  It  is  a  spiritual 
Power  which  works  according  to  moral  laws,  and  through 
the  natural  processes  of  human  life.  It  is  the  personal  in- 
fluence of  the  Holy  Spirit  with  the  spirit  of  man.  It  is  a 
divine  co-working  with  the  human  according  to  the  nature 
of  man  and  the  love  of  God  in  Christ.  It  is  like  the  energy 
of  the  sunshine  in  the  fruit ;  it  is  the  life  of  the  vine  in  the 
branches. 

In  Christianity  the  power  of  the  Spirit  may  be  said  to 
have  become  naturalized  both  in  the  individual  faith,  and 
through  the  influences  of  social  regeneration  which  Chris- 
tianity evokes.  The  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit  has  become 
to  a  certain  extent  naturalized  in  the  life  of  the  Christian 
home,  in  the  heredity  of  Christian  parentage,  in  the  gra- 
cious aids  and  customs  of  true  Christian  society.  Infant 
baptism   signifies,  among  other  things,  this  truth  of  the 

1  2  Cor.  V.  16.  2  2  Cor.  v.  17. 


THE   CHRISTIAN   MORAL   MOTIVE   POWER  493 

natural  inlieritance  of  moral  motive  and  spiritual  regenera- 
tion into  which  the  child  enters  by  its  Christian  birth. 
The  influence  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the  Christian  home 
and  the  Church  is  the  power  of  the  Highest  let  down  into 
human  life,  and  to  be  taken  up  in  the  processes  of  life,  — 
the  supernal  moral  Power,  which,  working  with  all  natural 
forces,  shall  accomplish  the  ultimate  perfection  of  the 
individual  souls  in  which  it  dwells,  and  create  anew  the 
society  in  Avhich  it  abides. 

Christian  ethics  adds  thus  to  the  motive  of  life,  in  the 
hard  struggle  of  the  good  with  the  evil,  an  inspiring  hope 
of  final  victory  and  perfection.  It  lifts  the  burdening 
sense  of  failure  from  the  best  human  hearts.  It  causes  the 
Ideal  to  inspire  us  to  ever  new  and  noble  endeavor,  instead 
of  mocking  us  by  its  unattainable  beauty.  It  turns  even 
our  present  imperfection  into  future  expectation  ;  it  blesses 
us  in  our  conscious  want  of  the  righteousness  of  Christ. 
Its  high  commandment  of  virtue  becomes  sweet  promise 
to  the  heart.  The  Christian  Ideal,  which  has  once  for  all 
been  made  real,  and  which  has  dwelt  among  us  full  of 
grace  and  truth  in  Jesus  Christ,  looks  down  upon  us  from 
out  the  heavenly  glory  with  a  most  friendly  aspect,  and 
its  gospel  is  a  divine  invitation  to  the  weakest  and  the  most 
sinful,  speaking  still  in  the  strong,  tender,  human  sympathy 
of  the  Christ,  and  saying,  "  Come  unto  me."  The  Christian 
moral  motive  power  is  motive  for  sinners,  —  it  is  power  to 
save  unto  the  uttermost. 

In  Plato's  ideal  State  the  moral  problem  arose,  how  should 
the  soldiers  and  guardians  of  the  city  be  made  virtuous 
and  courageous  for  their  tasks?  The  dyers,  so  Plato 
argued,  when  they  want  to  dye  wool  for  making  true  sea- 
purple,  begin  by  selecting  their  white  color  first ;  then 
they  prepare  and  dress  it  with  no  slight  circumstance,  in 
order  that  the  white  ground  may  take  the  purple  hue  to 
perfection.  Whatever  is  dyed  in  this  manner  becomes  a 
fast  color,  and  no  washing  with  lyes  or  without  lyes  can 
take  away  the  bloom  of  the  color.  When  the  ground  has 
not  been  duly  prepared,  the  colors  have  a  washed-out  and 
ridiculous  appearance.     So  Plato  sought  to  prepare  influ- 


494  CHRISTIAN   ETHICS 

ences  which  should  enable  the  guardians  of  his  ideal  State 
to  take  the  dye  of  tlie  laws  in  perfection ;  the  color  of  their 
opinions  was  to  be  indelibly  lixed  by  their  nurtuie  and 
training,  '^  not  to  be  washed  away  by  any  such  potent  lyes 
as  pleasure,  —  mightier  agent  far  in  washing  the  soul  than 
any  soda  or  lye  ;  and  sorrow,  fear  and  desire,  mightier  sol- 
vents than  any  others."  ^  Thus  in  Plato's  ideal  society  the 
perfect  good  can  be  obtained  only  for  the  choice  spirits  by 
careful  selection  of  the  material,  and  by  still  more  pains- 
taking processes  of  training  and  education.  The  wool 
must  itself  be  white  before  it  can  take  the  perfect  bloom 
of  the  sea-purple.  But  to  the  Hebrew  prophet  this  word 
of  the  Lord  had  come  with  a  larger  hope  and  a  diviner 
secret  of  grace  for  man's  redemption, —  "Come  now,  and 
let  us  reason  together,  saith  the  Lord :  though  your  sins 
be  as  scarlet,  they  shall  be  white  as  snow ;  though  they  be 
red  like  crimson,  they  shall  be  as  wool."  ^  Not  through 
natural  selection  of  the  whitest  wool  for  the  dyers,  but 
through  the  spiritual  regeneration  of  a  humanity  stained 
with  sin,  the  love  of  the  Christ  saves  the  lost,  and  He 
that  sitteth  on  the  throne  makes  all  things  new.^ 

As  the  Christian  man  lives  in  this  power  of  the  world 
to  come,  and,  having  fought  "  the  beautiful  fight,"  *  goes 
hence  to  receive  the  crown  of  righteousness,  so  likewise  the 
Christian  faith  holds  up  for  human  society  the  ethical  hope 
of  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth  wherein  dwelleth  righteous- 
ness.^ The  times  and  the  seasons  knoweth  no  man  but  the 
Father ;  there  are  greater  works  of  faith  to  be  accom- 
plished, and  there  are  before  us  in  our  generation  unfin- 
ished ethical  tasks  of  providence ;  but  the  Christian  social 
ideal,  in  some  sure  world-age  to  come,  is  to  be  realized  in 
the  completion  of  the  Messianic  kingdom  which  the  Christ 
shall  give  up  to  the  Father.  The  kingly  procession  of  the 
divine  decrees  moves  on  toward  the  thrones  on  which  the 
Christian  seer  saw  those  unto  whom  judgment  is  given  ; 
the  prophetic  vision  of  the  Christian  centuries  is  uplifted 
to  the  city  of  God,  the  holy  cit}^  which  shall  come  down 
out  of  heaven  from  God,  having  the  glory  of  God. 

1  The  Republic,  iv.  (Jowett's  Trans.).  -  Is.  i.  18. 

3  Rev.  xxi.  5.  4  2  Tim.  iv.  7.  ^  2  Peter  iii.  13. 


INDEX 


Accommodation,  the  method  of,  401. 

Adornment,  of  life,  370. 

Esthetic  ideal,  the,  137. 

Ambition,  3(j7. 

Ames,  "William,  414. 

Anaxa.ijoras,  358. 

Aquinas,  8,  314. 

Aristotle,  25,  50,  129,  132,  220,  324,  338, 
481. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  137. 

Asceticism,  119,  332,  351. 

Augustine,  242,  391,  392. 

Authority,  of  the  Scriptures,  61 ;  in  re- 
ligion, 73;  of  the  State,  264. 

Ball,  John,  224. 

Baur,  F.  C,  314. 

Beauty,  a  moral  end,  369. 

Beysciilag,  ^Y.,  106. 

Bibliolatry,  of   Lutheran   scholastics, 

95. 
Blackstone,  Sir  William,  417. 
Blessedness,  118. 
Brentano,  L.,  447. 
Buddhism,  134. 

Caird,  Edward,  285. 

Caird,  John,  22. 

Calixtus,  George,  9. 

Calling  in  life,  353. 

Calvin,  John,  11,  406. 

Celsus,  488. 

Chastity,  334. 

Christ,  the  authority  of  the  Scriptures, 
61;  himself  the  ideal,  120;  rights 
asserted  by,  381 ;  originality  of  his 
moral  teaching,  54 ;  its  positive- 
ness,  99;  unity  of  his  life,  318. 

Christian  consciousness,  2,  64. 

Christian  ethics,  authority  of,  6 ;  defi- 
nition of,  1 ;  requirements  for  the 
study  of,  45. 

Church,  duties  in,  421 ;  formative  ethi- 
cal idea  of,  274;  in  New  Haven 
colony,  288;   membership  in,  422; 


relation  to  other  societies,  280;  to 
the  State,  281 ;  social  obligations  of, 
464 ;  taxation  of,  287. 

Cleanthes,  340. 

Clement  of  Alexandria,  132,  370. 

College,  the  Christian,  308. 

Collision  of  moral  claims,  317. 

Community,  the,  291. 

Comte,  14. 

Confession  of  sins,  301. 

Confessional,  the,  300. 

Conflict,  the  law  of,  242 ;  spiritualiza- 
tion  of,  246. 

Conscience,  authority  of,  28 ;  the  Chris- 
tian, 293;  the  collective,  300;  educa- 
tion of,  297;  of  the  Church,  299; 
growth  of,  under  the  law,  159; 
means  for  the  Christian  education 
of,  303  ;  natural  history  of,  30,  152  ; 
origin  of  the  word,  164;  questions 
of,  311;  social  derivation  of,  31. 

Conservatism,  76. 

Cooperation,  the  law  of,  247. 

Corporate  relations,  duties  in,  435. 

Darwin,  Charles,  361. 

Davenport,  John,  3S2. 

Death,  a  part  of  duty,  336;  unethical 
thoughts  of,  338. 

Delitzsch,  F.,  57. 

Dike,  S.  W.,  259. 

Distribution,  economic  principle  of, 
449 ;  ethical  law  of,  450. 

Divorce,  410. 

Dorner,  I.  A.,  7,  44,  57,  75,  95,  172,  178, 
217,  266,  3(52,  414,  475. 

Driver,  S.  R.,  163,  176. 

Drummond,  H.,  356. 

Dury,  John,  11. 

Duties,  classification  of,  320;  to  ani- 
mals, 322 ;  to  God,  468 ;  to  the  re- 
vealed God,  474;  to  the  unknown 
God,  470;  towards  nature,  323;  to 
others,  371 ;  to  self,  327. 

Dynamics,  moral,  480. 

495 


496 


INDEX 


Ecce  Homo,  488. 

Economics,  relation  to  Christian  ethics, 
26. 

Edersheim,  A.,  95,  105. 

Education,  over-education,  358;  spe- 
cialization of,  oGO. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  237. 

Election,  prophetic  doctrine  of,  90. 

Emerson,  R.  W.,  256. 

Enjoyment,  306. 

Epictetus.  131, 132. 

Erskine,  T.,  117. 

Ethics  (see  Christian)  ;  {esthetic,  137; 
Buddhistic,  13-4;  evolutionary,  29; 
Greek,  29;  individual  and  social, 
216;  naturalistic,  5;  normative,  49 ; 
philosophical,  4;  see  also  Utilita- 
rianism. 

Eusebius,  341. 

Evangelical  counsels,  the,  313. 

Evil,  possibility  of,  148. 

Ewald,  H.,  105,  176. 

Expiation,  179. 

Faith,  authority  of,  201 ;  Christian  use 
of,  204 ;  nature,  191 ;  relation  to 
love,  223 ;  to  the  Scriptures,  71 ; 
validity  of,  153,  203;  virtuousness 
of,  224. 

Fall,  the,  150. 

Family,  the  sphere  of,  259;  duties  in, 
405 ;  objective  worth  of,  400. 

Fear,  105 ;  of  death,  338. 

Feelings,  the  moral,  151;  cultivation 
of,  303. 

Felix,  Minucius,  1. 

Fenton,  J.,  261. 

Fichte,  J.  G.,  87. 

Freedom,  Christian,  294. 

Fremantle,  W.  H.,  485. 

Friendship,  433. 

Funeral  customs,  338. 

George,  Henry,  402. 

God,  the  ethical  idea  of,  44, 175 ;  "  God 
in  his  World,"  376;  Jesus'  doctrine 
of,  110. 

Goethe,  360,  391. 

Good,  the  highest,  83;  Biblical  doc- 
trine of,  88 ;  definitions  of,  87 ;  duty 
of  realizing,  364;  utilitarian  idea 
of,  84. 

Gore,  Charles,  183. 

Gouge,  William,  415. 

Graham,  William,  446,  452. 

Green,  T.  H.,  21,  31,  34,  36,  83,  217. 


Happiness,  obligation  of,  366;  relation 

to  life,  119. 
Harmes,  F.,  325. 
Hatch,  E.,  132. 
Hegel,  88,  203. 
Herbart,  J.  F.,  88. 
Holiness,  123. 
Hobbes,  200,  272. 
Hofeding,  H.,  263,  269,  292,  382. 
Honorableness,  403. 
Hope,   the   Christian,   296;   scientific, 

80 ;  social,  494. 
Hopkins,  Mark,  436. 


Ideal,  the,  21,  49;  absolute,  123;  aes- 
thetic, 137  ;  Buddhist's,  134 ;  Christ's, 
96,  106,  123;  the  Christian,  58; 
classic,  129 ;  comprehension  of,  127  ; 
contents,  83;  evolutionary,  140; 
forms  of,  216 ;  in  the  historic  Christ, 
52 ;  methods  of,  241 ;  mediation 
tlirougli  the  Scriptures,  60 ;  through 
Christian  consciousness,  64 ;  proc- 
ess of  realization,  144 ;  socialistic, 
142. 

Ideas,  power  of,  256. 

Ignatius,  1,  298. 

Ihering,  Rudolf  von,  244. 

Imagination,  the  spiritual,  363. 

Immortality,  81. 

Incarnation,  the,  182;  ethical  signifi- 
cance of,  187. 

Independence,  of  the  individual,  301. 

Indeterminate  social  spheres,  the,  291 ; 
duties  in,  432. 

Individuality,  353. 

Industrial  conscience,  the,  434;  evils, 
444 ;  methods,  443. 

Integrity,  350. 

Israel,  morals  and  religion  in,  15 ; 
moral  motives  in,  483 ;  virtues  and 
faults,  91. 


Jerome,  St.,  392. 
Jodl,  F.,  23,  51,  87. 
Josephus,  341. 

Justice,  obligation  of,  375 ;  the  love  of, 
378 ;  means  of,  383. 

Kant,  87,  173,  343,  386. 
Kingdom  of  God,  Jesus'  doctrine  of, 
96 ;  method  of  its  coming,  105,  111. 
Kingsley,  Charles,  457. 
Knowledge,  worth  of,  358. 


INDEX 


497 


Krause,  K.  C.  F.,  88. 
Kuenen,  A.,  136,  163,  176. 


Law,  the  epoch  of,  155 ;  Judaic,  96 ; 
Paul's  conception  of,  176. 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  129,  342. 

Lessing,  206. 

Lies  of  necessity,  399. 

Life,  tlie  love  of.  111 ;  Jesus'  doctrine 
of,  111. 

Locke,  John,  266. 

Lotze,  H.,  41,  172. 

Love,  analysis  of,  226 ;  material  prin- 
ciple of  Christian,  223,  237;  rela- 
tion to  faith,  223;  to  God,  478; 
toward  others,  371 ;  to  self,  327. 

Lowell,  James  R.,  348,  400,  420. 

Luthardt,  C.  E.,  132. 

Luther,  Martin,  451,  462. 

Lux  Mundi,  60. 


Mackenzie,  J.  S.,  80,  142,  448. 

Malebranche,  358. 

Marheineke,  P.  C,  127. 

Marriage,  407. 

Marshall,  Alfred,  446,  452,  460. 

Martensen,  H.,  222,  240,  328. 

Martineau,  James,  17,  25,  28,  75,  153. 

Martyr,  Justin,  183. 

Marx,  Karl,  446. 

Matheson,  G.,  488. 

Maurice,  F.  D.,  277,  309. 

Merit,  238, 

Messiah,  the  Jewish  conception  of,  93. 

Messianic  time,  105. 

Metaphysics,  relation  to  ethics,  3. 

Mill,  J.  S.,  14,  37. 

Milton,  269,  390. 

Miracles,  253. 

Missionary  obligation,  the,  432. 

Mohler,  J.  A.,  314,  315. 

Monopolies,  446,  462. 

Moral  development,  the  Christian,  182 ; 
legal  epoch,  155;  j)rehistoric,  146; 
prophetic,  163. 

Moral  indifferent,  the,  311. 

Morison,  J.  Cotter,  482,  487. 

Morley,  John,  401. 

Motive  power,  analysis  of  the  Chris- 
tian, 489 ;  the  Christian  in  history, 
483;  of  Christ's  life,  491;  in  the 
Church,  487;  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, 486;  of  the  Spirit,  492;  of 
utilitarianism,  481. 


Motives,  material  of,  in  Christ's  teach- 
ing, 490 ;  moral,  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, 483. 

Mozley,  J.  B.,  161,  485. 

Mulford,  E.,  172. 

Miiller,  Julius,  158,  314. 

Miiller.  Max,  135. 

Nature,  duties  towards,  323 ;  spiritual 

use  of,  249. 
Neander,  129,  130. 
Newspapers,  308;  religious,  309. 

Obedience,  159. 

Paul,  63,  176. 

Paulsen,   F.,   269,   341,  358,   360,   447, 

451. 
Perkins,  William,  384,  436. 
Personal  example,  310;  influence,  254; 

relations  to  he  completed,  114. 
Philosophical  postulates,  26. 
Plato,  39,  220,  493. 
Pleasure,  37,  83. 
Plutarch,  130. 
Politeness,  391. 
Politics,  271,  418. 
Political  ethics,  of  the  New  Testament, 

415. 
Porter,  Noah,  436. 
Positivism,  14,  141. 
Poverty,  443. 
Prayer,  476. 

Privacy,  the  right  to,  348. 
Production,  capitalistic,  452. 
Professional  conscience,  the,  438. 
Progress,  in  doctrine,  62,  67 ;  of  faith, 

196. 
Prophetic  era,  the,  163. 
Psychologj^,  relation  to  ethics,  7,  28. 
Public  spirit,  418. 
Pulpit,  30G. 
Puritans,  139,  224. 
Purity,  350. 

Rae,  John,  452. 

Reconciliation,  190;  duty  of,  476. 
Religion,  relation  to  ethics,  13. 
Retribution,  178. 
Reuss,  E.,  163. 
Right,  the  idea  of,  168. 
Rights,  171. 

Righteousness,  124,  227. 
Rothe,  Richard,  1,   27,  174,  220,  250, 
284,  311,  316,  324,  325,  469. 


498 


INDEX 


Sabbath,  observance  of,  478. 

Sacrifice,  the  law  of,  373. 

Saussaye,  D.  C.  de  la,  135,  136. 

Schiiffle,  A.,  284,  453,  455. 

S^helling,  88. 

Schiller,  87,  137. 

Schleiermacher,  2,  88,  127,  320. 

Schools,  public,  moral  teaching  in, 
303. 

Scholar,  obligations  of,  438. 

Scriptures,  Protestant  idea  of,  75 ;  rela- 
tion to  faith,  71. 

Schultz,  H.,78,  484. 

Schiirer,  E.,  03,  95. 

Scotus,  Duns,  44. 

Self-control,  354 ;  culture,  333 ;  defence, 
334 ;  denial,  372 ;  development,  35G ; 
education,  357;  love,  327;  preserva- 
tion, 331 ;  respect,  404. 

Selfishness,  329. 

Shairp,  J.  C,  29,  482. 

Shepherd  of  Hermas,  313. 

Sidgwick,  H.,  449. 

Sin,  174;  the  Christian  sense  of,  189; 
strife  against,  354. 

Smith,  H.  B.,  237. 

Smith,  W.  Robertson,  125,  175. 

Social  classes,  mutual  obligations  of, 
436 ;  conscience,  298 ;  discontent, 
442;  duties  under  present  system, 
459;  problem,  441;  nature  of,  447; 
root  of,  in  moral  evil,  456. 

Socialism,  448;  early  Christian,  458; 
economic  fallacies  of,  452;  radical 
sociological  defect  of,  454. 

Society,  the  Christian  idea  of,  258. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  14,  80,  86,  173,  204, 
248,  288,  455. 

Spinoza,  39. 

Spirit,  the  divers  works  of,  72;  in 
Christian  experience,  207. 

Stahl,  F.  J.,  172,  173. 

State,  authority  of,  263;  duties  in,  415 ; 
limits  of  sovereignty,  260 ;  moral 
and  religious  character,  270,  271 ; 
relation  to  the  Church,  281. 


Statesmanship,  duties  of,  420. 
Stephen,  Leslie,  2,  3,  19,  30,  149,  238, 

257,  394. 
Stoicism,  167. 
Strauss,  D.  F.,  53. 
Suicide,  339. 

Supererogation,  works  of,  313. 
Sympathy,  31. 

Taylor,  Jeremy,  398,  411. 

Taylor,  N.  W.,  238. 

Temperance,  334. 

Theology,  postulates  of,  43;  relation 

to  ethics,  8. 
Tholuck,  A.,  222. 
Toy,  C.  H.,  94. 
Trades  Unions,  440. 
Trusts,  440. 
Truth,  duty  of  giving,  400;  love  of, 

296. 
Truthfulness,  386;  exceptions  to,  392. 
Tylor,  E.  B.,  156. 

Ueberweg,  F.,  220. 
Ulrici,  H.,  21,  172. 
Utilitarianism,  37,  84. 

Valor,  404. 

Virtue,    genesis    of    Christian,    232; 

growth    in,    235;     merit    of,    239; 

nature  of,  222 ;  process,  234. 
Virtues,  the  bold,  379;  classification, 

220 ;  forms,  216 ;  unity,  221. 

Weber,  F.,  95,  106. 
Weiss,  B.,  117. 
Wendt,  H.  H.,  Ill,  116. 
Westcott,  B.  F.,  57. 
Wholesomeness  of  habits,  335. 
Will,  free  receptive  power  of,  193. 
Worth,  the  idea  of,  37. 
Wuttke,  A.,  12,  321. 

Zeno,  130,  340. 
Ziegler,  T.,  373. 


Typography  by  J.  S.  Gushing  &  Co.,  Boston,  U.S.A. 
Presswork  by  Berwick  &  Smith,  Boston,  U.S.A. 


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clear,  analytical  mind,  an  extensive  knowledge  of  German  philosophical  thought, 
and  an  intellectual  familiarity  with  the  later  English  schools.  He  does  his  own 
thinking,  and  writes  with  perspicuity  and  vigor." 

THE  ORTHODOX  THEOLOGY  OF  TO-DAY.  A  New  Edition  with 
a  New  Preface.    I  vol.,  l2mo,  $1.25. 

N.  Y.  CHRISTIAN  ADVOCATE. —  "  TAe  Orthodox  Tlieology  of  To-Bay  has  all 
the  good  qualities  so  abundantly  manifested  in  his  volumes  The  Religious  Feeling 
and  Old  Faiths  in  New  Light.  But  it  is  a  stronger  and  broader  book  than  either. 
..  .  .  No  one  of  the  newer  writers  of  the  Orthodox  Church  is  growing  more  rapidly 
or  manifests  in  his  writings  wider  sympathies,  or  deeper  spiritual  insight." 

DORNER  ON  THE  FUTURE  STATE.  Being  a  Translation  of  the 
Section  of  his  System  of  Christian  Doctrine,  comprising  the  Doc- 
trine of  the  Last  Things.  With  an  introduction  and  notes.  I  vol., 
l2mo,  $1.00. 

ZION'S  HERALD.  —  "As  the  most  vigorous  expression  of  the  argument  for  a 
possible  probation  after  death,  founded  upon  the  presumption  that  the  Gospel  must 
be  decisively  presented  to  all  for  tinal  acceptance  or  rejection,  the  volume  will  be  read 
with  interest  by  thoughtful  students  of  the  Word.  The  argument  is  deductive  and 
philosophical  rather  than  directly  Scriptural,  but  is  reverently  and  candidly  presented. 
It  covers  much  more  than  this  one  '  burning  question,'  and  is  a  very  suggestive  dis- 
cussion of  the  events  following  death,  as  indicated  by  the  established  laws  of  mind 
and  the  revelations  of  the  Bible." 


CHURCH   HISTORY. 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY.     With   a  View  of  tho 

State   of  the   Roman    World    at  the    Birth    of  Christ.     By 

GEORGE    P.    FISHER,    D.D.,    LL.D.,    Professor   of  Church 

History  in  Yale  College.    8vo,  $2.50. 

THE  BOSTON  ADVERTISER.— "  Prof.  Fisher  has  displayed  in  this,  as  in  his 

previous  published  writings,  that  catholicity  and  that  calm  judicial  quality  of 

mind  which  are  so  indispensable  to  a  true  historical  critic." 

THE  EXAMINER.— "The  volume  is  not  a  dry  repetition  of  well-known  facts. 
It  bears  the  marks  of  original  research.  Every  page  glows  with  freshness  of 
material  and  choiceness  of  diction." 

THE  EVANGELIST.— "The  volume  contains  an  amount  of  Information  that 
makes  it  one  of  the  most  useful  of  treatises  for  a  student  in  philosophy  and 
theology,  and  must  secure  for  it  a  place  in  his  Ubrary  as  a  standard  authority." 

HISTORY  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH.  By  GEORGE  P. 
FISHER,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History  in 
Yale  University.    8vo,  with  numerous  maps,  $3  50. 

This  work  is  in  several  respects  notable.  It  gives  an  able  presenta- 
tion of  the  subject  in  a  single  volume,  thus  supplying  the  need  of  a 
complete  and  at  the  same  time  condensed  survey  of  Church  History. 
It  will  also  be  found  much  broader  and  more  comprehensive  than  other 
books  of  the  kind.     The  following  will  indicate  its  aim  and  scope. 

FROM  THE  PREFACE.— "There  are  two  particulars  in  which  I  have  sought 
to  make  the  narrative  specially  serviceable.  In  the  first  place  the  attempt  has 
been  made  to  eshibit  f  uUy  the  relations  of  the  history  of  Cliristianlty  and  of  the 
Church  to  contemporaneous  secular  history.  «  •  »  I  have  tried  to  bring  out 
more  distinctly  than  is  usually  done  the  interaction  of  events  and  changes  in  the 
political  sphere,  with  the  phenomena  which  belong  more  strictly  to  the  ecclesiasti- 
cal and  religious  province.  In  the  second  place  it  has  seemed  to  me  possible  to 
present  a  tolerably  complete  survey  of  the  history  of  theological  doctrine.    *    •    • 

"  II  has  appeared  to  me  better  to  express  frankly  the  conclusions  to  which  my 
Investigations  have  led  me,  on  a  variety  of  topics  where  differences  of  opinion 
exist,  than  to  take  refuge  in  ambiguity  or  silence.  Something  of  the  dispassionate 
temper  of  an  onlooker  may  be  expected  to  result  from  historical  studies  if  long 
pursued ;  nor  is  this  an  evil,  if  there  is  kept  aUveawarm  sympathy  with  the  spiiit 
of  holiness  and  love,  wherever  it  is  manifest. 

"As  thi3  book  is  designed  not  for  technical  students  exclusively,  but  for  intel- 
ligent reade-s  generally,  the  temptation  to  enter  into  extended  and  minute  disc u* 
glooa  on  perplexed  or  controverted  topics  has  been  resisted." 


STANDARD    TEXT  BOOKS. 


HISTORY  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  CHURCH.  By  PHILIP  SCHAFF, 
D.D.  New  Edition,  re-written  and  enlarged.  Vol.  I.— Apos- 
tolic Christianity,  A.D.  1—100.  Vol.  I!.— Ante-Nicene  Chris- 
tianity, A.D.  100-325.  Vol.  III.— Nicene  and  Post-Nicene 
Christianity,  A.D.  311-600.  Vol.  IV.— JVIedioBval  Christianity, 
A.D.  590-1073.    8vo,  price  per  vol.,  S4.G0. 

This  work  is  extremely  comprehensive.  All  subjects  that  properly 
belong  to  a  complete  sketch  are  treated,  including  the  history  of  Chris- 
tian art,  hymnology,  accounts  of  the  lives  and  chief  works  of  the 
Fathers  of  the  Church,  etc.  The  great  theological,  christological,  and 
anthropological  controversies  of  the  period  are  duly  sketched  ;  and  in 
all  the  details  of  history  the  organizing  hand  of  a  master  is  distinctly 
seen,  shaping  the  mass  of  materials  into  order  and  system. 

PROF.  GEO.  P.  FISHER,  Of  Yale  College.— "Br.  Schaff  has  thoroughly  and 
successfully  accomplished  his  task.  The  volumes  arc  replete  with  evidences  ol  a 
careful  study  of  the  original  sources  and  of  an  extraordinary  and,  we  might  say, 
unsurpassed  acquaintance  with  the  modern  literature— German,  French,  and 
English— in  the  department  of  ecclesiastical  history.  They  are  equally  marked  ty 
a  fair-minded,  conscientious  spirit,  as  well  as  by  a  lucid,  animated  mode  of 
presentation." 

PROF.  ROSWELL  D.  HITCHCOCK,  D.D.— "In  no  other  single  work  of 
its  kind  with  which  I  am  acquainted  will  students  and  general  readers  Cnd  so 
much  to  Instruct  and  interest  them." 

DR.  JUL.  MULLER,  of  Halle.— "It  is  the  only  history  of  the  first  six  cen- 
turies which  truly  satisfies  the  wants  of  the  present  age.  It  is  rich  in  results  of 
original  investigation." 

HISTORY  OF  THE  CHURCH  OF  CHRIST,  IN  CHRONOLOGI- 
CAL TABLES.  A  Synchronistic  View  of  the  Events,  Charac- 
teristics, and  Culture  of  each  period,  including  the  History  of 
Polity,  Worship,  Literature,  and  Doctrines,  together  with  two 
Supplementary  Tables  upon  the  Church  in  America;  and  an 
Appendix,  containing  the  series  of  Councils,  Popes,  Patri- 
archs, and  olher  Bishops,  and  a  full  Index.  By  the  late 
HENRY  B.  SMITH,  D.D.,  Professor  in  the  Union  Theologi- 
cal Seminary  of  the  City  of  New  York.  Revised  Edition- 
'    Folio,  $5.00. 

REV.  DR.  W.  G.  T.  SHEDD.— "  Prof.  Smith's  Hisiorical  Tables  are  the  best 
that  I  know  of  in  any  language.  In  preparing  such  a  work,  with  so  much  care  and 
research.  Prof.  Smith  has  furnished  to  the  student  an  apparatus  that  wiU  be  of 
life-long  service  to  him" 

REV.  DR.  WILLIAM  ADAMS.— '"?he  labor  expended  upon  such  a  work  la 
immense,  and  its  accuracy  and  completeness  do  honor  to  the  rci3ea;ch  and 
echolarship  of  its  author,  and  are  an  invaluable  acquisition  to  our  literatiue." 


